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JOHN WANAMAKER 


Booxs By HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS 


VENIZELOS 
PARIS REBORN 
RIVIERA TOWNS 
JOHN WANAMAKER 
PORTS OF FRANCE 
EUROPE SINCE 1918 
THE NEW MAP OF ASIA 
THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE 
THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 
FRANCE AND OURSELVES 
SONGS FROM THE TRENCHES 
AMERICA’S PLACE IN THE WORLD 
INTRODUCTION TO WORLD POLITICS 
THE BLACKEST PAGE IN MODERN HISTORY 
THE FOUNDATION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 
THE LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE LUXEMBOURG 
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND THE NEAR EAST 





aS 


AUOLS VIHdIAGVIIHG FH], 








uN ~N OV15 1926 
J OHN ‘WAN AMAKER 


HERBERT ADAMS “GIBBONS 


ILLUSTRATED 


in 
\ 
4 





IN TWO VOLUMES 
VOLUME TWO 


HARPER @ BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
MCMXXVI 


JOHN WANAMAKER 





Copyright, 1926, {by 
Rodman Wanamaker 
Printed in the U.S.A. 





First Edition 


I-A 


CHAPTER 


I 
II 


GO NV EIN ys 


THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK 
ADVERTISING PIONEER 

MERCANTILE PIONEER 

THE HABIT OF EUROPE 

TO INDIA AND BACK 

ART AND ARCHAOLOGY 
ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES 
EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 
RIDING THE STORM 

LINDENHURST 

IN THE COMPANY OF THE SAINTS JOHN 
LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 
CORONATION EXPERIENCES 

THE GOLDEN JUBILEE 


THE NEW HOME OF THE PHILADEL- 
PHIA STORE 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S 
HOUSE 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF I9Q12 
THE STORE FAMILY 


ADVENTURES IN MERCANTILE EDUCA- 
TION 


ADVENTURES IN INDUSTRIAL AND PUB- 
LIC EDUCATION 


es 


282 


290 


vi CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
XXI A MILITANT TOTAL ABSTAINER 305 
XXII THE FRIENDLY INN 314 
YXXIII THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 320 
“ XXIV. BETHANY 328 
“XXV THE CHURCH STATESMAN 345 
XXVI AN INTERPRETER 356 


XXVII), THE FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN 
WAR 368 


XXVIII THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 389 
XXIX IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY 402 
XXX A BLOW AT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 428 


XXXI AFTER SIXTY YEARS | 442 
XXXII FLORIDA TRIPS 450 
XXXIII LAST DAYS 461 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 467 


INDEX 483 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE PHILADELPHIA STORE Frontispiece 
Facing page 


COPY OF ENGRAVING OF ALEXANDER T. 
STEWART 


MARY WANAMAKER GIRLS’ SCHOOL AT ALLAHA- 
BAD, INDIA 


YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION BUILD- 
ING, MADRAS, INDIA} PRESENTED BY HON. 
JOHN WANAMAKER IN 1900 


WEARING GOWN IN WHICH HE RECEIVED THE 
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS FROM THE UNI- 
VERSIDY OF UOPENNSYLUVANTA, TUNE: U7 TE, 
1915 

THE NEW YORK STORE, SHOWING BOTH BUILD- 
INGS 

SPECIALTY SHOP——BURLINGTON ARCADE, NEW 
YORK STORE——IQIO, SHOWING THE SOCIAL 
STATIONERY AND BOOK SECTIONS 


THE NEW HOME, “LINDENHURST,” BUILT IN 
1884 

WITH A BETHANY BROTHERHOOD MAN AT THE 
ANNUAL LABOR DAY REUNION AT LINDEN- 
HURST—A SNAPSHOT OF JOHN WANAMAKER 
WHEN HE WAS OVER EIGHTY 

THE NEW LINDENHURST 

PARIS HOUSE, 44. RUE DES PETITES ECURIES 

LONDON HOUSE, 26 PALL MALL 

LUNCHEON OF THE CITY OF LONDON TO KING 
GEORGE AND QUEEN MARY AT THE GUILD- 
HALL, CORONATION WEEK, IQI1 

Vil 


66 


72 


102 


174 


Vill ILLUSTRATIONS 


Facing page 
IN NEW YORK IN IQI2 190 
MILLROSE A. A. BUILDING 278 
MILLROSE A. A. TENNIS COURTS 278 
J. W. C. I. CAMP AT ISLAND HEIGHTS, N. J. 282 


JOFFRE DAY AT WANAMAKER’S, PHILADELPHIA, 
MAY QTH, 1917 

LUNCHEON GIVEN BY HON. JOHN WANAMAKER 
TO THE BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE LORD’S 
DAY ALLIANCE OF THE UNITED STATES, IN 
NEW YORK, JUNE 16TH, 1921 


THE BETHANY BROTHERHOOD HOUSE, AND THE 
JOHN WANAMAKER BRANCH OF THE FREE 
LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA 


PART OF ORIGINAL CARTON, WRAPPED IN THE 
Japan Advertiser OF YOKOHAMA 


PORTRAIT OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER, BY LEO- 
POLD SEYFFERT IN I9I9, WHICH HANGS IN 
THE OFFICE OF THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL 
AT WASHINGTON 


THE PROCLAMATION OF THE DECLARATION OF 
INDEPENDENCE BY THE MID-EUROPEAN 
UNION AT INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADEL- 
PHIA, OCTOBER 26TH, 1918 


JOHN WANAMAKER AND GENERAL PERSHING 

GENERAL PERSHING AT THE WANAMAKER 
STORE, PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER 12TH, 
IQIg 

RECEPTION TO DESIDERATUS CARDINAL MER- 
CIER, SEPTEMBER 26TH, 1919 

“KNOCKING A HOMER” 

AT LINDENHURST IN 1921 


286 


322 


328 


354 


356 


412 


418 


424 


426 


434 
460 


TO Os hee RES 


PAGE 
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS, 1902, WRITTEN ON 
THE INDIAN OCEAN NEAR CEYLON 61 


ONREHREV ET Ob Te I EyPANICAOR MOOT, 118 


IN THE FIRST MONTH OF THE PANIC 120 


IN THE MIDST OF THE PANIC 


124 
AFTER THE PANIC 126 
EXTRACT FROM DIARY, MARCH 14TH, IQII 187 
A COURTESY CARD 269 
AFTER HEARING A SERMON AT BETHANY, I915 329 
DRAFT OF BETHANY ADVERTISEMENT: CELEBRA- 

TION OF SOLDIERS’ HOMECOMING, IQ19Q 343 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CONDOLENCES ON THE 

OCCASION OF MRS. WANAMAKER’S DEATH, 

1920 362 
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CHRISTMAS GREET- 

INGS 364 
DRAFT OF LIBERTY LOAN ADVERTISEMENT, IQ18 406 
““NOT READY TO QUIT,” I9QI5 439 
BIRTHDAY LETTER TO HIS SON 440 


ABOUNDING GOOD HEALTH AT FOURSCORE 
YEARS | 451 
1X 


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JOHN WANAMAKER 


pie A 





CHAPTER I 


THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK 


ANY years after his New York store was opened 
John Wanamaker wrote to a friend: “I think that 
Philadelphia is narrowing to a man who lives there all the 
time. New York has many more inspirations and centers 
of thought.” Such an admission could never have been 
wrung from the Philadelphia merchant during the first half 
century of his life. The thought had not entered his 
head. It was an opinion formed—and candidly expressed 
—only after he had actually lived in New York and fought 
his way to the front in the business world there. Testi- 
mony to the peculiar stimulus of New York was given pub- 
licly in an address on September 24, 1907, when he said, 
“T believe that there is nowhere in the world the same 
quality of vitality that you get when you touch the people 
of New York.” All men who love to keep doing things 
have the same feeling. They may say that they hate New 
York—but they know in their hearts that they are happier 
there than anywhere else in the United States, happy 
because they find their happiness in working and New York 
keeps constantly calling for the best that is in them. 

The influence of his New York business venture upon 
John Wanamaker’s capacity for achievement in the last 
decades of his life was inestimable. It sent new blood 
coursing through him. It opened up new vistas to him 
when just continuing to run the store in Philadelphia might 
have made him grow old comfortably. 

“What keeps you young?” a reporter once asked him. 


I 


2 JOHN WANAMAKER 


“Sunday afternoons at Bethany and doing business in 
New York,” was the laconic response. 

Wanamaker meant what he said. Looking into the faces 
of children every week was the best tonic he could have. 
And the problems of retailing in New York City made him 
“keep humping,” as he expressed it—and merrily—until 
death claimed him. “In Philadelphia, if I wanted to, I 
could sit in the house I had built,” he explained, “but in 
New York I must go on the stage every day and do my 
very best to keep the audience.” 

On another occasion, while riding in Cone bank saie 
put the situation in terse and graphic words: “If the squir- 
rels here didn’t keep foraging they would starve; Philadel- 
phia squirrels count on the acorns hitting them on the 
nose.” 

The challenge of New York had come to Wanamaker 
early in his business career. We have seen how Ogden 
proposed an Oak Hall branch there before he cast in his 
fortunes with Wanamaker in Philadelphia. Several years 
later, when Judge Hilton and William Libbey, Stewart’s 
only surviving partner, dissolved the firm of A. T. Stew- 
art & Co., which they had carried on since the founder’s 
death, there had been an opportunity for Wanamaker to 
become Stewart’s successor. On April 15, 1882, Stewart’s 
former secretary, who was still associated with the firm, 
wrote to Wanamaker requesting an interview, and inclosing 
the proof of an announcement that they contemplated put- 
ting in the press. The liquidation notice said that A. T. 
Stewart & Co. intended “to discontinue their dry-goods and 
manufacturing business” and “to offer their stocks of mer- 
chandise for sale at attractive prices.” De Brot wanted an 
interview with Wanamaker to lay the whole situation before 
him. But the time was not yet ripe. Wanamaker had first 
to assure the stability of his “new kind of store.” Ogden 


THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK 2 


had only recently joined him, and was at Oak Hall devot- 
ing himself to men’s and boys’ clothing. 

A. T. Stewart had died on April 10, 1876, just at the 
moment of the opening of the Grand Depot. After the 
firm was broken up in 1882, the business at Ninth Street 
and Broadway was continued under several names until 
Hilton, Hughes & Co. failed on August 26, 1896. Wana- 
maker’s position then was far different from what it had 
been fourteen years earlier. He had an able associate to 
call upon, and his sons were coming to their prime. The 
inclination to look beyond Philadelphia, which had not been 
in him before 1889, was now very strong. Only Marshall 
Field in Chicago equaled John Wanamaker in prestige and 
in resources as a general merchant. Then, too, the Phila- 
delphia store, although it did the greatest retail business 
in the country, was not big enough to use to advantage all 
the energy and talents of three men such as John Wana- 
maker, Thomas B. Wanamaker, and Robert C. Ogden. 

How Wanamaker seized the opportunity we are able to 
give in his own words: 

“In the McKinley campaign I was in the Western part 
of the state, trying to make speeches, when I received a 
telegram from the people interested in the receivership 
that had come with the disasters of some of those who pre- 
ceded the present business. I drove twelve miles of a Fri- 
day night in the moonlight, through Susquehanna County 
to Montrose, and I slept my way to New York, with 
a dream of how I could bring Mr. Ogden back again to 
New York, if I should do what I was urged to do, purchase 
the old Stewart business. I came that Friday night, or Sat- 
urday morning, met Mr. Ogden, who was dazed at the 
idea of it, but went home Saturday night with the whole 
thing in my pocket, trying to fit Mr. Stewart’s shoes on 
Mr. Ogden and myself.” 


4 JOHN WANAMAKER 


It must not be supposed, however, that the deal had been 
negotiated in one day. After the announcement was given 
to the press, Judge Russell, of the bankrupt firm, stated 
that “Mr. Wanamaker had for a long time been eager to 
get an opening here in New York, and he made us an offer 
some time ago for our place.” But Hilton, Hughes & Co. 
had been trying to stave off the failure. Three years before 
Judge Hilton had secured $1,000,000 on the Stewart build- 
ing from Mrs. Hettie Green at six per cent., and not long 
before the failure an additional sum had been borrowed on 
the business to prevent an assignment. Hilton had also 
hired away from Wanamaker his advertising manager at a 
large increase of salary, and there had been a period of tem- 
porary prosperity. But carrying the mortgage charges had 
proved too great a burden. The Wanamaker offer, when 
first made, had been declined; and it was later a subject of 
discussion and adjustment among the creditors. 

Wanamaker had gone into all the details of the negotia- 
tions with his customary thoroughness. The block on 
which the Stewart building stood was a leasehold from the 
Sailors’ Snug Harbor, which terminated in 1909; and Wan- 
amaker wanted to be sure of a long extension of the lease 
before he decided to put the Stewart business back on its 
feet. Henry Morgenthau, through whom the negotiations 
for the leasehold and buildings were carried on, told the 
biographer that John Wanamaker had an amazing knowl- 
edge of every business and legal aspect of the sale, and 
that he knew how to drive a close bargain. He ascertained 
just what his title would be and he had the stocks and 
stables appraised, before he made a firm offer. It was only 
the final acceptance of his figure that came when he was 
campaigning. There had been rumors of the deal for some 
weeks before it was announced. 

The purchase, which the New York newspapers called 


THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK 5 


“the largest retail transaction ever made in New York,” 
included the Stewart building and leasehold; stables and 
land at 160 West 1oth Street, with wagons, harness, and 
horses; the entire stocks of the store; and the good will 
of the business. Mr. Morgenthau considered it the great- 
est real-estate bargain ever made in New York of his day, 
provided “the location remained good for retail business.” 
The existing stocks were somewhat depleted and not all of 
Wanamaker standard, so they were considered by the pur- 
chaser a minor part of the transaction. What Wanamaker 
prized most highly was what Hilton, Hughes & Co. had 
thrown away—the Stewart name. 

Wanamaker believed implicitly in good will built wholly 
upon the confidence of the public in the merchant. It was 
a conviction that ruled his life; and his admiration for 
Stewart was based upon the integrity, high standards of 
taste, and broad vision of his predecessor more than upon 
his merchandising genius. A. T. Stewart & Co. had meant 
much to him in his early business life, and he never tired 
saying so. But the greatest legacy he received from his 
association with and study of Stewart was contained in one 

*A. T. Stewart prophesied shortly before his death that “if young Wana- 
maker lives, he will be a greater merchant than I ever was.?”? Wanamaker 
told F. G. Carpenter in October, 1897: 

“J met him often when I was a young man. I used to buy goods of him, 
and I have reason to think that he took a liking to me. One day, I remem- 
ber, I was in his woolen department buying some stuff for my store here 
when he asked me if I would be in his store for fifteen minutes longer. 
I replied that I would. At the end of fifteen minutes he returned and gave 
me a check for $1,000, asking me to use it for my mission school in Phila- 
delphia.” 

On the day of Stewart’s death, April 10, 1876, Wanamaker wrote to 
William Libbey, a member of the firm: 

“T am stunned by the totally unexpected announcement of Mr. Stewart’s 
death and tender my sympathies in the loss of a great man who was your 
personal friend as well as mine. The regard I had for the excellent man 
prompts me to come to his funeral if it is not altogether private. Can I 
be of the slightest service to you? 


“Yours with great attachment, 
“JOHN WANAMAKER.” 


6 JOHN WANAMAKER 


sentence from a letter written by the New York merchant 
to President Grant in 1869, declining the offer of a posi- 
tion in his Cabinet. Stewart had said: 


The merchant of the future will be not only an economist and an 
industrial leader, but also a teacher and a humanitarian. 


This is why Wanamaker put in a small tablet on the 
corner of the Stewart building: 


JOHN WANAMAKER 
FORMERLY 
A. T. STEWART AND CO. 


Wanamaker did not need the prestige of the Stewart 
name to trade upon in his business. His own name suf- 
ficed. But he said that it would be a high honor for him 
to be able to perpetuate in the twentieth century the old 
Stewart traditions in the history of retail merchandising in 
America. Stewart had not lived to share in the new era 
of the general store. But he had dignified the calling of 
merchant by the goods he sold and the way he sold them, 
and he had laid the foundation for what was in his time 
the largest dry-goods business in America by combining the 
privilege of personal ownership with the response of 
personal management. 

The advent of John Wanamaker in the retail field in 
New York was cordially greeted by the daily press and by 
the trade journals. The Dry Goods Chronicle spoke of 
the purchase as “one of the most gigantic mercantile trans- 
actions in the history of the world,” and said editorially: 


The knowledge that John Wanamaker is to carry on the enterprise 
founded by the greatest merchant that New York ever knew will be 
received by New Yorkers generally with much satisfaction. . . . 

John Wanamaker is probably the one man in the world equal to the 
task of re-establishing the life work of A. T. Stewart on as high a plane 
as it occupied when that great merchant died. 





Copy oF ENGRAVING OF ALEXANDER |. Stewart BY W. T. BorHer, New York 


(From Thomas Hope, private secretary to Mr. Stewart) 


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THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK 7 


If John Wanamaker was “the one man in the world equal 
to the task of re-establishing the life work of A. T. Stew- 
art,” it was not only because of his success in Philadelphia, 
but also because he alone was willing and able to accept 
the heritage of Stewart in the down-town location. He had 
bought Hilton, Hughes & Co. “lock, stock, and barrel,” for 
less than three million dollars. But it was an amazing 
bargain only if the location could be restored to retailing. 
Few thought that this was possible. Despite the evidence 
to the contrary, it was commonly believed that Wanamaker 
would only technically reopen the Ninth and Broadway 
business, while he was looking around for an uptown site; 
and that the Stewart building would be used for a wholesale 
department, following the trend of Broadway below Four- 
teenth Street. 

The time for a new enterprise in retailing was inauspi- 
cious. After four years of a Democratic administration, 
during which the almost constant depression was laid to the 
door of low tariff, the party in power had split over the 
money issue. Bryan’s nomination was regarded as a men- 
ace by Democrats of the East as well as by Republicans. 
But there were defections to free silver in Republican ranks 
also. Before the election manufacturers feared overpro- 
duction. Could a worse time have been picked for entering 
the New York department-store field? McKinley defeated 
Bryan; but the latter received over six million votes. After 
election there was still uncertainty in the business world as 
to the future; for another year would pass before the tariff 
could be revised. It was hard to believe that Wanamaker 
would dare to launch the new venture as a great retail busi- 
ness on a par with his Philadelphia store. 

But the Wanamaker organization formed its plans and 
made decisions promptly, like the general staff of an army. 
Ogden moved to New York, with several leutenants, and 


g JOHN WANAMAKER 


organized his administrative and selling staff. Most of the 
employees of Hilton, Hughes & Co. were retained. John 
Wanamaker and his son Thomas went over every detail of 
store planning with Ogden and of stocks with the buyers. 
John Wanamaker personally supervised the display of 
stocks and the decorations for the opening; and he spent 
much more time over advertising than over financing. 
The foreign offices in Paris and London were suddenly con- 
fronted with a tremendous task and problem—to buy for 
New York without preparation or warning. 

On Saturday, November 14, 1896, the Wanamaker 
advertisement, now familiar to a generation in the metro- 
politan district, made its first appearance in the New York 
newspapers. It was stated that the least bulky of the 
Hilton, Hughes stocks had been removed to and sold in 
Philadelphia, and that the New York store of John Wana- 
maker would open with new stocks. The announcement 
continued: 


To do this we have drawn largely by cable upon the resources of our 
Paris organization, and have used for this purpose our foreign corps of 
more than twenty buyers. ‘Their personal selections for the present sea- 
son enable us to present the latest and best things from all the European 
markets. 

It is well to remember that this enterprise was begun before the elec- 
tion in a time of great depression. And therefore exceptional bargain- 
making power was placed in the hands of our buyers. It is thus that 
we can offer many kinds of goods at prices based upon values of a 
depressed period. 


The reopening of the old Stewart store did much to stim- 
ulate retail business and restore confidence in New York 
before the Christmas season of 1896. We can imagine the 
joy of the Hilton, Hughes employees, many of the most 
capable of whom dated back to Stewart days. There was 
the same relief on the part of wholesalers to whom one 


THE CHALLENGE: OFVNEW ‘YORK 9 


more large market was not only restored, but greatly 
increased. In an editorial on November 19, three days 
after the opening, the New York Times expressed what 
everybody felt: 


The revival of this great business meant work for factories that 
would otherwise be shut down; meant occupation for thousands who 
otherwise would have been idle; and it means that in the face of all 
the grumbling about hard times there has been one man so well convinced 
of the renewal of prosperity, that he takes unto himself a duplicate busi- 
ness of one whose astonishing proportions would stagger an average 
merchant. 


A. T. Stewart, a young Irish immigrant with a university 
background,” opened a dry-goods store in 1823 at 283 
Broadway, near Chambers Street and opposite the park. 
He had twelve and a half by thirty feet. The store grew 
slowly during its first quarter-century, and in 1848 Stewart 
built a “great marble store” at the corner of Broadway and 
Chambers Street. Another fifteen years passed, and the 
retail business of A. T. Stewart & Co. was moved to “upper 
Broadway”—the block between Ninth and Tenth Streets 
and Broadway and Fourth Avenue across from Grace 
Church. The land was leased from the Sailors’ Snug Har- 
bor for fifty years. The New York Tribune of the day 
said that “the two stores at lower and upper Broadway 
which Mr. Stewart has built are the proudest monuments 
of commercial enterprise in the country. The trade trans- 
acted in them is almost fabulous.” The Stewart “business 
palace,” as it was called, was the finest business structure in 
America. When it was completed in 1863, it was also the 
largest business building in New York. Interest in it, 


1He was born near Belfast and went through Trinity College, Dublin. 
His grandfather, who had adopted him when his parents died, sent him 
to the United States with the intention of having him enter the Theological 
Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton. 


IO JOHN WANAMAKER 


from an architectural as well as a storekeeping point of 
view, was international.” 

Peter Cooper, whose Union was on the opposite side of 
Astor Place, supplied most of the iron. Stewart said to 
Cooper: “My store shall vie with your museum, and peo- 
ple will throng to it as they do to an exhibition.” He put 
no sign on the building, assuming that none needed to be 
told what it was, and that if they were strangers they would 
inquire. He had six doors. When asked which was to be 
the front door, he answered, “‘All of them are the front 
door.” 

The year after he had taken over the Stewart business 
Wanamaker said to a reporter: 


“I have been surprised again and again as I have gone through that 
building, walking in that dead man’s shoes, to find what a knowledge 
he had of the needs of a mercantile establishment. Stewart put up a 
building which is to-day, I believe, far better arranged than any of the 
modern structures that are being erected.” 


In his first issue of the Philadelphia Store News, in 1883, 
Wanamaker put Stewart’s picture in the middle of the first 
page and wrote under it: 


The first thought of a big store brings to mind A. T. Stewart. He it 
was who first formulated the system for many varieties of goods under 
one roof; and he it was who organized the best house of its kind, so 
far as known to this century. His greatness as a merchant none can 
dispute. The great concerns of Paris never equaled the product of Stew- 


art’s genius, nor do they to-day rise to the proportions of some of our 
stores. 


"That Stewart should have moved his business uptown and should have 
conceived and completed the building at Ninth and Broadway during the 
first thirty months of the Civil War is in itself of great historical interest, 
just as the founding and rapid extension of the Wanamaker business in 
Philadelphia during those same thirty months is significant. The Civil War 
did not paralyze or disrupt business in the United States even temporarily. 
Retail merchandising kept growing when the Union was in danger just as 
if there had been no war. A monument of Civil War days, the Stewart 
building stands as a witness to the fact that no cataclysm affects for long 
or seriously the ordinary pursuits of the human race. 


THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK Il 


But the admiration for Stewart, the shopkeeper, which he 
retained to the end of his life, did not blind the Wana- 
maker of later years to the defects and limitations of the 
man to whose business he had succeeded in New York. In 
an unpublished interview with S. S. McClure in 1912, sten- 
ographic notes of which are in the private files, McClure 
spoke of the fact that “first-rate merchandising is not over 
sixty years old.” Wanamaker answered: 


It is not forty years old. Stewart didn’t have the idea. He was a 
shrewd money-making man and that was his life, just that. First, his 
education fitted him to do better things than people who just fall into 
things by accident. He fell in by accident. He had the opportunity 
to do the best thing in New York City, but he walked around as a 
horse used to in the old brickyard when I was a boy and ground the 
clay by turning a wheel. He never got beyond that. His friendship 
for Grant brought him into public notice, but he wasn’t strong enough 
to just simply lay down his business and do something in the public 
service. 

I never forget that his success was in his personal attention to the 
details of the business. Others could have done it just as well. It was 
a curious trait in a man who achieved a fine degree of success. He could 
have had others to look after the details—they have to be looked after, 
but few attend to sweeping up, and that’s what Stewart did. 

All my recollection of him in his retail store was in sweeping up. 
That was his way. I would go in and want to see him and I would find 
him on the floor going about looking at a pile of dress goods. He had 
a woman’s voice and he would say, ‘“‘You had six pieces of this goods 
yesterday and they do not seem to have been sold. You must sell 
them.” ‘Then he would go to the next place with a paper in his hand 
and say, “You had twelve of these hats three weeks ago, now you have 
eleven.” That sort of thing. 

A man with all his power ought to be way up—better throw those 
hats away than to spend his time on them. 

The kind of business he did was magnificent in its quality of merchan- 
dise and fairness, but there was a lot of foolishness in it which couldn’t 


exist in any business to-day. 


Wanamaker went into the retail field in New York with 


12 JOHN WANAMAKER 


his eyes open. We find in his papers admirable studies of 
the New York department stores of 1896. ‘There is also a 
report on the great specialty shops which had to be counted 
upon as competitors. But Wanamaker had confidence in 
himself. He believed that it would be possible to do in New 
York what he had done in Philadelphia, and the very fact 
of the kind of competition he would encounter, coupled with 
his late entry into the field, made him look forward eagerly 
to the fun of demonstrating the efficiency of Wanamaker 
merchandising policy and Wanamaker advertising in New 
York. Too often had it been said that John Wanamaker 
was the child of fortune whose enormous business was due 
to being first in the field and to a lucky choice of what 
became in time the best location in Philadelphia. People 
who didn’t like him were trying to find every reason for 
Wanamaker’s position in the world except the real one. 

The challenge of New York was fascinating because in 
New York only the man himself would count. He was 
going into competition with long-established general stores 
and specialty shops. His location was regarded as a hope- 
less handicap, even when he started at Ninth Street and 
Broadway. 

When the project was mooted, one of Wanamaker’s 
friends, who had business interests in New York, told him 
bluntly: “Don’t do it down there on Broadway. You 
won’t have a ghost of a chance.” 

Wanamaker laughed heartily and put an affectionate 
hand on the friend’s shoulder. 

“Some day I may have to thank you heartily for those 
words. As it is, I am your debtor. Don’t fail to call on 
me if you ever want anything.” 

Much relieved, the friend said: “Then you will listen to 
common sense! How glad every one will be.” 

“No, no, it is uncommon sense that I have my ear out for. 


THE CHALLENGE OF NEW YORK 13 


You know that only that would get my attention. What 
you have said is what all the good friends told me in 1861 
and 1876 and 1877. They said it was madness, what I 
proposed doing. But where would I be if they had per- 
suaded me not to try? So when you come along, and other 
friends—with the same story—I feel in my bones that I 
should go ahead.” 

The spirit in which John Wanamaker went to New York 
is well illustrated by an answer he once gave to a young 
man who wanted to know the formula for success. Wana- 
maker told him, “Go and pray, ‘Dear God, give me the 
toughest job you have.’ ” 


CHAPTER II 


ADVERTISING PIONEER 


E, have told the story of the spectacular advertising 

exploits of the first fifteen years of Wanamaker’s 
career. Advertising was an indispensable factor in the 
young merchant’s success. In his twenties he showed the 
qualities that gave him a commanding place in the history 
of modern advertising—courage, persistence, honesty, orig- 
inality, a sense of value, and an open mind. He was a 
constant student of human nature; he used experience as a 
teacher; and he was never content with the results of his 
efforts. In ten years he built up the largest retail clothing 
business in America because he had believed that good will 
was an asset which justified looking upon advertising as a 
capital investment. 

When the people came to know where Oak Hall was, by 
dint of much telling them, he had something to say—always 
new—about the goods he was offering and about how he 
was selling them. His long fight to establish new busi- 
ness principles led him—perhaps at first unconsciously—to 
discover three things, the superiority of the daily newspaper 
as a medium for reaching the public, the practicability of 
buying more newspaper space than any American before his 
time had ever dreamed of using without increasing his sell- 
ing costs, and the necessity of inventing a new way of writ- 
ing advertisements. . 

Wanamaker’s first advertising was in daily newspapers. 
While he never ceased trying other mediums, it quickly 
became his fixed conviction that he could not afford to let 

14 


ADVERTISING PIONEER 15 


a working day pass without using the newspapers. During 
the first decade the Oak Hall newspaper advertisements 
gradually increased in size. Other retail merchants fol- 
lowed the same policy, but he always kept ahead of them. 
In the early 1870’s he found that he needed more news- 
paper space to educate the public in the radically new 
merchandising principles of which he had become the Amer- 
ican exponent. When he abandoned specializing in men’s 
and boys’ clothing to enter the field of general merchan- 
dising, fifteen years of bold and thoughtful use of printers’ 
ink were behind him. The far greater volume of retail 
business that came with a rush at the Grand Depot gave 
him more money to spend in advertising and he was carry- 
ing goods that were more varied and of greater general 
interest. 

Once the new kind of store was successfully launched 
and his ideas of doing business were being adopted by other 
merchants, John Wanamaker was ready for further pioneer- 
ing. In September, 1874, he had used the first half-page 
advertisement in a newspaper to set forth in detail the 
principles upon which his business had been founded and 
which had been developed and practiced at Oak Hall. This 
advertisement was copyrighted. Because of content as well 
as size, the advertisements of this educational campaign 
were an innovation. They read like news articles. The 
same departure in custom occurred again in announcing the 
opening of the Grand Depot in 1876 and of the new kind 
of store in 1877. In December, 1879, during the great 
reception given to General Grant on his return from gir- 
dling the globe, appeared the first full-page mercantile 
advertisement in an American newspaper. 

Two decades of testing and preparation passed before 
Wanamaker was ready to buy a whole page for every 


16 JOHN WANAMAKER 


week day of the year, thus creating another precedent in 
American journalism." Throughout these twenty years he 
remained the pioneer among American merchants. He had 
dispensed with agents and had gone directly to the Phila- 
delphia newspaper proprietors, bargaining with them for a 
definite amount of space, on contract, for periods from six 
months to a year. He literally leased his daily space. 
Others followed where he led. The custom of buying 
daily space by contract became established. It enabled 
newspapers to increase their size as they increased their 
circulation. They began to look upon retail merchants as 
their principal source of revenue. 

During the first quarter-century of developing his gen- 
eral store Wanamaker did not neglect other means of adver- 
tising than the daily newspaper, all of which contributed 
powerfully in the development of the style and content of 
the full newspaper page as we have it today. In his life- 
long study of advertising there was “no day without its 
line.” We have spoken elsewhere of the establishment of 
his own printing-house in 1876, which issued one million 
copies of a booklet about Oak Hall and the Grand Depot 
at the time of the Centennial Exhibition. | Wanamaker’s 
printers put his ideas in type, and he saw how they looked 
on the printed page before he published them. No other 
merchant had ever thought of doing this. He tried full 
pages in weekly and monthly periodicals. This is how 
The Farm Journal originated. It was first published at the 

*On January 2, 1899, the Associated Press carried the following item, 
dated Philadelphia: “John Wanamaker has announced that he has entered 
into a contract to use one page in the Philadelphia Record daily, except Sun- 
day, for one year at a cost of $100,000. It is the first full-page contract 
ever entered into with a daily newspaper and the largest amount involved 
in an advertising contract of this kind up to this time.” This was soon 


followed by similar contracts with other newspapers in Philadelphia and 
New York. 


ADVERTISING PIONEER 17 


Grand Depot in 1876, with the Wanamaker advertising 
page as its financial underwriting." Wanamaker used full 
pages in the Century and Scribner’s in the early 1880's.” 
In connection with his book business his advertisements had 
nation-wide circulation, and were copied everywhere. He 
conceived the idea of store magazines for “ladies”—as 
women were then called. The Philadelphia Store News— 
a complete newspaper—was published first in 1883, devoted 
to items of interest about the Wanamaker business. Every- 
body’s Journal, a little periodical issued as an advertisement 
for Oak Hall, grew into Everybody’s Magazine, a pioneer 
in the ten-cent field. Catalogues that were precursors of 
the huge volumes now issued by mail-order houses, book- 
lets, circulars, and cards, calling attention to sales or spe- 
cific categories of merchandise, went out through the mails. 

These undertakings, all innovations in themselves, some 
in the idea and others in the style, were a parallel effort 
to the evolution of newspaper copy. John Wanamaker’s 
advertising department started as a laboratory, and it has 
always been that. Through experimenting came knowl- 
edge. The staff grew rapidly. But there was never a time 
that the head of the business did not take an active part 
in inspiring the experiments and in studying them. Blaz- 
ing the trail in newspaper advertising was a long and ardu- 


* The Farm Journal is still the most widely circulated of the national farm 
publications. The A B C report of December, 1925, gave it a circulation of 
1,144,148 and an advertising rate of $2,750 a page. See above, vol i, 
Pp: 197-8. 

* In Scribner’s for July, 1880, appeared the first advertisement of a general 
store in a magazine of national circulation, which took the form of a 
“Stray Leaf from a Young Lady’s Journal.” In the Century for December, 
1882, John Wanamaker in the third person told the country what he had 
accomplished until his business “to-day is the largest on the continent. He 
deals in everything almost. People in the most distant states and territories 
write to him for everything. If he does not happen to deal in the article 
they want, even then, sometimes, he gets it for them, and takes the risk of 
being right.” + 

* See vol. i, pp. 196-7. 


18 JOHN WANAMAKER 


ous task. The full-page presentation of what the Wana- 
maker stores had to offer did not just happen. 

The consistent use of large newspaper space necessitated 
an abandonment of the old methods of writing advertise- 
ments. The sums involved in contracts for this space, when 
totaled up and joined with other advertising expenses, 
would never have been justified and have proved successful 
had there not been from the first full value received.’ 
Long lists of articles, with prices, repeated daily, did not 
attract sufficient customers to pay for the space. The peo- 
ple were tiring of jingles, dialogues, letters, and boasts. 
The reiteration of business principles was not a luxury that 
could be indulged in frequently. Extravagant praise of 
merchandise John Wanamaker would never tolerate any 
more than he tolerated overselling. He believed, as he put 
it early in life, that “the best advertisement is a pleased 
customer.” To create good will, as we have seen, was his 
reason for regarding advertising as an investment. This 
conception made him hostile to the constant announcement 
of sales. Wanamaker was not.interested in moving auction 
lots and bargain goods upon which he could not put the 
guaranty of his name. So there had to be some new idea. 

The idea that came to him was simplicity itself. A news- 
paper was for news—people read it for that; but the news 
must be accurate and worth publishing, or the people would 
not read it. In three years a mammoth store had grown 


“In 1887, Wanamaker said: “My plan for fifteen years has been to buy 
so much space in a newspaper and fill it up with what I wanted. I would 
not give an advertisement in a newspaper of 400 circulation for 5,000 
dodgers or posters. I deal directly with the publisher. I say to him: How 
long will you let me run a column of matter in your paper for $100 or 
$500, as the case may be. I let him do the figuring and if I think he is 
not trying to make more than his share I give him the copy. I lay aside 
the profits of a particular line of goods for advertising purposes. ‘The first 
year I laid aside $3,000; last year I laid aside and spent $40,000. I have 
done better this year and shall increase that sum as the profits warrant it. 
I owe my success to the newspapers, and to them I shall freely give a certain 
profit of my yearly business.” 


ADVERTISING PIONEER 19 


out of the Grand Depot, with an amazing variety of mer- 
chandise, whose daily happenings were well worth report- 
ing. He decided to put before Philadelphians every day 
merchandising news, written in plain, straightforward lan- 
guage, and printed in clear, readable type—illustrated, too, 
if you please! On his desk forty years ago was the Chinese 
motto, “One picture is worth 10,000 words.” 

On April 3, 1880, Wanamaker advertising threw over- 
board all precedents, and became news. To his advertising 
manager Wanamaker gave these instructions: 

“Your sole business as a writer of our advertising is to 
find out the truth regarding the merchandise and to tell 
it in plain words as briefly as you can.” * 

The 1880's were years of patient experimenting. The 
new form of advertising was not easy to inaugurate or to 
persist in. Wanamaker had able helpers, but what he had 
in mind to accomplish for a long time eluded them and 
him. If there is anything harder in the world than stat- 
ing facts interestingly it is getting facts to state. The 
business was growing rapidly, merchandising conditions were 
being revolutionized, and competitors were springing up 
whom it was hard to meet on the daily basis of simply giv- 
ing information to the public. Wealth and honors came 
to the founder of the business, and he gained nation-wide 
reputation as a merchant pioneer. But he was still far from 
the goal he had set before him—the universal acceptance 
of the identity of interests of merchant and customer. In 
the full tide of prosperity, with a great organization, it 
was far harder to hew to the line than it had been in the 

* Wanamaker never modified this unique conception of the content of 
advertising. He told the Advertising Clubs of the World, on June 26, 1916, 
that after fifty-five years of experience he had “not been able to discover 
that there was any other rightful function of advertising than to do just one 


thing—to inform the public that the merchant had brought in certain goods, 
with a proper description of them, and what the honest prices were.” 


20 JOHN WANAMAKER 
earlier days. In buying and selling the fight was hard 


enough to match promise with performance; in advertising 
the effort was almost superhuman. But Wanamaker accom- 
plished it because he was a student and because there was 
no limit to his alertness and courage. By insisting upon 
rigid adherence to the rules he had laid down his advertis- 
ing was honest. The public took him at his word. 

After his return to the active management of his busi- 
ness, with the Postmaster-Generalship behind him, he said: 

“Genuinely good advertising must give in wording some- 
thing that will be read about the goods that are wanted and 
that will present clearly and exactly what the goods are. 
It is generally known that common advertising is like bar- 
rels of seed in which half of the seed is dead. If all adver- 
tising were believed and the goods of the value stated, 
stores could be made twice as large and business twice as 
good. It used to be said that it was only necessary to put 
the name of the store in the newspaper, repeating it over 
and over for emphasis, that the space might be filled in a 
striking manner, and. thus get the name of the store known 
to the public—it was thought this was the whole of adver- 
tising. Now we know that publicity has a larger and finer 
field than this—that it must be informative, educative, pro- 
ductive—in a word, scientific.” 

And to a young newspaper reporter, to whom he had 
offered a position on his staff, he wrote: 


I wish you could see as I see the elevation of business standards that 
must inevitably follow proper preparation of business literature. That is 
much more worthy of your best self than the society column, marriage 
and divorce articles, theatrical news and city gossip, and half the incidents 
that make up a writer’s work on a daily newspaper. Commercial writing 
is much more than mere advertising. Only a very few as yet see that 
business writing is a different thing from the humbuggery of varnishing 


ADVERTISING PIONEER oF 


unsalable goods with a pen that must always write white and never 


black. 


In this “proper preparation of business literature” he had 
become a master craftsman. Because he possessed what the 
French call the sens de la mesure and because to this rare 
gift were added deftness and charm, he was able to chal- 
lenge the emulation of his cleverest writers with master- 
pieces like this: 


SILK-AND-WOOL LANSDOWNES 


Made in old Philadelphia, not far from the Wanamaker Store. We 
always knew William F. Reade, and were the first to introduce and stand 
for the first Lansdownes that he made. : 

They have grown better and better and we always have the pick of 
them and cannot sell them for less than $1.25 a yard, unless we obtain 
them surreptitiously, cut the numbers off the edges, and sell them at cost 
as advertisements, as some others do. 

About once in six months we get “the plum” of the mill, in the 
“seconds” of probably 5,000 pieces, made in the half-year. We now 
have 292 long and short pieces; and there are 152 pieces in blues, 
blacks, browns, and greens, for New York, and they go on sale this 
morning in the Sub-Station Store. 

These $1.25 Lansdownes for 75c. per yard. It would take a skilled 
expert to find a thick thread or a skipped stitch, and you will say 
when you see them, thank Mr. Reade fifty cents a yard for being so 
particular. 


After he extended his business to New York in 1896, 
where he realized that advertising was the whole battle in 
getting a foothold, the advertising staffs in both stores were 
largely increased. Wanamaker committed himself to an 
advertising program that soon involved the outlay of over a 
million dollars a year. His publicity departments became 
like newspaper staffs, and those who gathered the advertis- 
ing copy were instructed to go out through the stores and 
see and study the merchandise before writing about it. “Tell 


2.0 JOHN WANAMAKER 


the truth even though it hurts,” he admonished them.’ 
He declared that the merchandise had to come up to the 
standard of the advertising, and that it was the task of the 
buyers, if they wanted their departments mentioned and 
their offerings featured, to have goods worthy of finding 
a place on the Wanamaker page in the newspapers. To 
indicate what equipment he deemed necessary for his adver- 
tising writers and to help them in doing their work he 
picked out books on history, art, taste, and merchandising 
materials, and had these iplaced in a special library. 
Wanamaker’s conception of the role of advertising in his 
business made him an exacting taskmaster. Those whom he 
chose for his associates in this department had to know how 
to interpret his ideas, to express his personality, to uphold 
the Wanamaker name. He once told one of his advertis- 
ing managers that allowing him to prepare the Wanamaker 
page was giving him a responsibility similar to that of the 
engineer of a passenger train. He must go at full speed, 
but he must be alert for signals; for to him was entrusted 
the life of the business. From a mistake might result a 
wreck, entailing tremendous loss. The advertising mana- 
ger had to be, as Wanamaker put it, “a good merchant 
and an alert student.” To this end he gave his people 
every facility for their work, his own time and talents in 
conference and criticism, and the opportunity to observe 
what was going on in the world by travel. This is best 
illustrated by a letter of instruction to one of the staff 
whom he sent abroad in the summer of 1905. He wrote: 
Jog around all sorts of places and jot down every suggestion. Ideas 
are what you want and when abroad | have always found them as plenty 
as blackberries in summertime. ‘They are in newspapers, signs, circulars, 
color, shape, wording. ‘The big and the little stores fairly knock me 


*For example: “The patterns are bad, but the article will give good 
wear”; “Look well, and everybody is wearing them, but they are not guaran- 
teed for long wear and not recommended for rough wear.” 


ADVERTISING PIONEER 23 


over with their leaping frogs, big and little. Everything you get will 
come in good sometime. Some days you will catch more than others— 
much depends on being well and in the spirit of fishing. Do not fret 
because some places and days at a time do not yield much—the next 
step you take around the corner may be to a rich find. Raking London 
somewhat and Paris much will be quite sufficient. 


We find an illuminating entry in his diary, the year of 
which we do not give, for obvious reasons: 


Just now I am up to my eyebrows in the reorganizing of the scientific 


advertising and editorial bureau. Mr. - is on his vacation and returns 





on Monday, when I disconnect him from his writing sanctums and 
place him as assistant to Mr. 





to study merchandise and to collect 
information on all classes of goods and then to getting things to the 
writing desk of the staff that I shall be the chief of myself till I get it 
all going well again. 

No greater pioneering was ever accomplished by John 
Wanamaker than in New York, where prior to his appear- 
ance the advertisements of the local stores consisted mostly 
of bare enumerations of the articles for sale fringed with a 
conspicuous row of prices. It was claimed that metropoli- 
tan shoppers would not take time to read what competitors 
derisively called “the Quaker’s solemn dissertations,” and 
that the New York public was the rock on which the Wana- 
maker style of advertising was destined to be wrecked. But 
the Wanamaker “store news,” printed with disregard of ex- 
pense in all the leading dailies, week after week and month 
after month, “vindicated the judgment of its originator,” 
as a New York trade journal put it, and ended in being 
imitated. 

Wanamaker had in New York a problem that could be 
solved in no other way than by consistently heavy advertis- 
ing. Against long-established competitors he had to build 
a clientele out of nothing. His downtuwn location * and 


*In using this expression the biographer must qualify it by stating that 
Wanamaker always stoutly maintained that Ninth and Broadway was central 
to the metropolitan area, and was not “downtown.” See below, chap. viii. 


2.4. JOHN WANAMAKER 


the absence of good will in the purchase he had made 
necessitated attracting customers to Ninth and Broadway 
who were skeptical of the success of his experiment of 
reviving a defunct business and who knew little, if any- 
thing, of what the Wanamaker name meant in merchandis- 
ing. He was thinking of himself in New York when he 
said to young men in an editorial: 


Do not presume that your name on a sign is worth anything, even if 
you bear the name of a worthy father or have inherited a business of 
his making. Your knowledge, integrity, and ability must be proven and 
appear before you claim credit and position for what was done by your 
predecessors. 


Wanamaker’s success in creating a permanent trade in 
New York has been the result of the service his store ren- 
dered and the goods it sold. But this confidence could not 
be gained until he had succeeded in attracting shoppers. 
Getting the people to come to his store was due to the skill 
with which he won their confidence. A new kind of adver- 
tising captured and held their interest because it proved to 
be what he claimed for it, “a simple statement of facts.” 

The New York newspapers owe a great debt to John 
Wanamaker, who led the way in the use of large space in 
daily advertising. Before the end of his first decade he 
was spending half a million dollars in week-day advertising 
in metropolitan newspapers. John Wanamaker never 
advertised in Sunday newspapers, and in this policy he was 
followed by Marshall Field. But he paved the way for 
the enormous expansion in daily advertising. When he 
died, Wanamaker had been in business in New York less 
than thirty years. During that time the increase in adver- 
tising far more than kept pace with the increase in circula- 
tion of New York newspapers. If we take out of the 
reckoning the Sunday editions, in which he was not inter- 


ADVERTISING PIONEER 25 


ested, he was by far the largest consistent advertising patron 
not only of metropolitan, but also of suburban, New York 
newspapers. And he gave the business managers of the 
dailies as helpful a selling argument as he had given 
life-insurance agents, when, out of his rich experience, he 
declared: 

“The only advertising of direct and instant benefit to 
both merchant and customer is in the daily newspaper of 
known circulation. All others are vanity and vexation of 
spirit. To have learned this fact has greatly helped my 
enterprises, though often there has been serious discomfort 
in saying so publicly and in breaking away from posters, 
leaflets and weeklies.” 

John Wanamaker’s adventures in advertising and _ his 
philosophy of advertising afford a temptation which the 
biographer must resist; for a whole volume could be writ- 
ten about them. In advertising he was interested and to 
advertising he gave personal supervision from the day he 
entered business for himself up to the last day in his office, 
sixty-one years later. None of his many activities brings 
out more clearly the characteristics that made him the 
unique merchant of his time. His advertising demonstrated 
his fertility, his zeal for study, his attention to detail, his 
knowledge of human nature, his honesty, his boldness, his 
persistence, and his far-sightedness. 

He was probably the first great advertiser who proved 
by example that advertising was one item of expense that a 
merchant could never afford to cut down, no matter what 
the circumstances. This truth he expressed forcefully in 
an interview with Frank G. Carpenter in October, 1897. 
He said: 

“‘When the times are hard and people are not buying, 
is the very time that advertising should be the heaviest. 
You want to get the people in to see what you have to sell, 


26 JOHN WANAMAKER 


and you must advertise to do that. When the times are 
good they will come of their own accord. But I believe 
in advertising all the time. I never stop advertising.” 

But his greatest service to advertising was in convincing 
the people that they could believe what reputable mer- 
chants said. He never let up on his war against dishonest 
advertising, and he was the first to insist upon the responsi- 
bility of publishers for the advertisements their papers car- 
ried. Periodicals multiplied and advertising grew in scope 
and volume, but the evils of the early days were not wholly 
corrected. He felt that “people who buy goods from stores 
all over the country are demanding the removal of the 
poison gases that have caused so many to begin to wonder 
whether advertising is a good thing for the customer or 
not.” Ina clarion call to the convention of the Advertis- 
ing Clubs of the World in Philadelphia in June, 1916, 
Wanamaker asked that they take steps to do away with 
misrepresentation, exaggeration, and extravagance. He 
made three pointed queries: 


1. Who will stand up and say plain words to halt the magazines and 
newspapers which insist upon great sums of money to be paid for adver- 
tising without taking any steps to ascertain whether qualities or prices are 
as stated? 

2. Who will make up the committee to take yesterday’s and to-day’s 
advertisements in the newspapers and compare their statements strictly 
and expertly with the merchandise that is offered, and find out what is 
true and what is false? 

3. Who among the newspaper publishers and managers in this conven- 
tion will stand up and declare that they will accept no more advertising 
at any price whatever until it has been proved true? 


Of all Americans he was the most qualified to issue this 


broadcast. For he was able to write in the last year of his 
life: 


ADVERTISING PIONEER my 


Though I have been a student of advertising for fifty years and more, 
I feel I have much to learn. But this one thing I know: It may take 
longer to reach the point of success by straightforward advertising, but 
when you once get halfway up the mountain toward it, you will find 
encouragement to keep on to the top in a straight path. 


CHAPTER III 
MERCANTILE PIONEER 


HE element of adventure in business kept John Wan- 
amaker young in spirit and effectiveness when most 
of his contemporaries had passed the zenith of their pow- 
ers. To him achievement was always something ahead, 
because before any immediate objective was attained he had 
found a new goal a long way off. He believed that the 
secret of enjoying life was in thinking of the future, toil- 
ing for the future, trusting in the future—with face aglow. 
He loved his business and gloried in being a merchant. 
No field of human activity, he often declared, was more 
fruitful in contributing to the progress of mankind, and 
none gave wider play to the imagination. It was a career 
that fitted the dreamer and the explorer. 

That many of John Wanamaker’s ideas were impracti- 
cable and fantastic did not bother him. He was not afraid to 
give expression to them—and then laugh at himself. But 
until he was satisfied with his own answer to the question, 
“Why not?” he did not dismiss an idea. He believed that 
he was living in an age of miracles and he had the faith 
that removed mountains. Frequently we find him telling 
his employees that although “not every egg in our nest 
becomes a chicken,” there is always the potentiality present. 
“An active mind, seeking new ways of doing old things and 
new and greater things to do, makes life a romantic reality.” 
Curiosity was no fault, but rather a virtue, if one did not 
stop there, for “man passes to achievement over the thresh- 
old of curiosity.” He once told a school graduating class 

28 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 29 


that the formula of success was O. P. B. + O. P. M.—other 
people’s brains + other people’s money. This raised a 
laugh. But the students grasped the significance of the 
formula when he stressed honesty and the ability to inspire 
confidence, and added that his formula worked only if the 
one who used it knew how to dream and was willing to dare. 

As great general stores developed and became competi- 
tors, it was natural that they should be proud of their inno- 
vations just as newspapers were proud of their “scoops.” 
The use of the news form of advertising, of which we 
have just spoken, gave them the opportunity to herald 
innovations. In the early days of telling his story in the 
newspapers Wanamaker had unconsciously made popular 
featuring achievements. He did not do it to boast. The 
man who is looking ahead, thinking of the future, making 
plans for greater things, as he was always doing, gets no 
satisfaction and wastes no time in dwelling on past per- 
formances. Reiterating his pioneering work in the field of 
retail merchandising had to be done in the great fight 
against the merchandising methods of his day and in the 
campaign to change the attitude of the customer toward 
the merchant. 

Years ago members of Wanamaker’s staff began to com- 
pile a list of “Wanamaker Firsts,” to be used for advertis- 
ing purposes. Published from time to time, on anniversary 
occasions, in the store advertisements, the chronological 
record of “Wanamaker Firsts” demonstrated the unique 
position of the Philadelphian in the history of the evolution 
of retail merchandising. The bare list of “Wanamaker 
Firsts,” from 1861 to 1922, would fill many pages. We 
shall not attempt to enumerate them." Of some of these 
innovations we have spoken where they have their place in 
the story of the man’s business career or where they seem 

* See Bibliography. 


30 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to us to illustrate his character and the scope of his activi- 
ties. Here we must content ourselves with the simple 
statement that the new things John Wanamaker thought of 
and introduced in his stores kept him a mercantile pioneer 
throughout his life. Scarcely a year passed without his 
name being associated with one or more radical departures 
in methods of retailing, in widening the influence and 
multiplying the activities of the general store, in improving 
service to customers, and in advancing the welfare of 
employees. 

The philosophy of John Wanamaker as a mercantile 
pioneer can best be expressed by quotations from three store 
editorials written during the last years of his life: 


That picture of a little child which the artist painted fifteen years ago 
is just the same as when he sent it here. It has not grown the least bit. 
There is a difference between a picture and this living thing of a store 
that has in it the life of its thousands of workers and tens of thousands 
of people that it serves. As all of us are all the time wishing and trying 
to do more for one another, there is a constant quickening at the roots 
and up above them signs of growth to the very top of this mercantile 
tree: 

A celebrated Englishman advised his son at school to “be a whole man 
at everything.” Many a boy so splits himself up to fit into athletics, 
school societies, glee clubs, etc., that he is not a whole boy at anything 
and only a middling boy at everything. How we would hate ourselves if 
we were keeping only a middling-good store. 

So many in this world are like the old miller at the lake, off the 
country road, who cared for nobody—‘‘no, not he’”—because nobody 
cared for him. The whole world will serve you if you prove that you are 
honestly trying to be of service to it. ‘‘Only life can give life, 
one has said. We must be interested in other people if we expect them 
to be interested in us. This huge hive of happy industry, full of busy 
bees, finds every day new gardens from which to gather good things of 
benefit to the public. 


?? some 


In his own words, and in homely fashion, the merchant 
has told us that growth is the test of vitality, that aimless 


MERCANTILE PIONEER eT 


diffusion of energy is a soporific, and that the desire to 
serve others is the incentive to progress. 

The Wanamaker idea of business, which gave the reason 
for—and is at the same time the record of—his pioneering 
was tersely put under seven heads in an advertisement that 
appeared in facsimile of Wanamaker’s handwriting in Phila- 
delphia and New York in October, 1903. ‘The merchant 
wrote: 


1. To establish a new kind of store, based upon a system of business 
free from defective old methods and lack of methods, and upon princi- 
ples by which it must steadily grow better. 

2. To combine certain carefully chosen businesses under one roof and 
one co-operative administration, maintain the individuality of each sec- 
tion as much as if it were in a separate building, and thereby construct 
a commercial enterprise obviously different from what is popularly known 
as “a department store.” 

3. To specialize in each class of business undertaken, improve upon it, 
perfect it, and make it superior in the course of time to any separate 
business of its kind. 

4. To build up a system with reciprocity between buyer and seller 
as the fundamental principle. 

5. To maintain accuracy and straightforwardness in all transactions 
large or small, without considering the profit in any one instance. 

6. To provide only trustworthy merchandise. 

7. To advance the welfare of those employed, by means of healthful 
accommodations, of continuing the shortening of hours and granting sum- 
mer recreations, and by raising higher and higher the standards to make 
a business life honorable and self-respecting, thus enabling, through a 
system of training, diligent and earnest people to develop business ability 
and to find careers, contentment, and remuneration in daily toil. 


After his death, one of his closest business associates stated 
that none could understand John Wanamaker—much less 
get a comprehensive picture of him—because his life was a 
series of water-tight compartments, each inclosing definite 
activities and interests, and that none who worked with him 
in any one of these compartments entered the others. But 


32 JOHN WANAMAKER 


all men who leave an indelible imprint upon their age are 
like that. Their genius is manifest in whatever they turn 
their hand to. And secretiveness is the inevitable corollary 
of their success, if not its explanation. Their outstanding 
quality is that of leadership. They furnish ideas; they 
direct the efforts that are made by delegated lieutenants to 
carry them out. They have not the time, and they do not 
feel the need, to correlate the parts of the mechanism they 
are directing. Each helper carries on in his appointed field. 
Each helper is at times dumfounded by the chief’s inti- 
mate knowledge and mastery in the specific work of the 
subordinate, and at others bewildered by the revelation of 
what he deems poor judgment or a lack of knowledge 
on the part of the chief. So it is that the biographer hears 
of flashes of genius—and of blunders. Robert C. Ogden, 
who was an executive officer of consummate ability but who 
had not Wanamaker’s genius for leadership and gift of 
imagination, used to say that he had never been able to 
make up his mind whether John Wanamaker was a very 
great man with amazing defects or an ordinary man with 
amazing talents. Could not every executive officer say the 
same of his chief? The very greatness of the qualities of 
leaders makes their defects stand out. The mistakes of a 
genius, the petty things about a great man, are more easily 
noticed and longer remembered than those of ordinary 
folk. 

Chips fall thick and fast, and then trees crash, before the 
ax of the pioneer. He does not pause to clear away and 
make an easily-traveled road. He has others to do that 
for him. His eyes are ahead; if he be a true pioneer, as 
Wanamaker was, there is always a trail to be blazed. This 
is one picture we get of Wanamaker from his correspond- 
ence, from his diaries, from the lips of those who worked 
with him. And it was Wanamaker’s own conception of his 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 33 


role in merchandising. He was always going ahead full 
tilt. He was happiest when confronted with a new problem, 
when challenged, when some “wild idea” entered his head 
which was no longer wild after he was through with it. 

But it was not all just feverish restlessness, unbounded 
energy impatient of the limitations of time and strength, 
and a swift succession of dreams and deeds. By tying up 
the loose ends as he went along the whole world was able 
to enjoy permanently the fruits of his pioneering. He was 
a constructive builder upon the foundations he dug, and in 
the course of building he found the leads to further 
pioneering. A man who is devoted to his principles, who 
loves the ideas that are children of his brain, is not content 
with simply announcing them; the true originator knows 
that his work is never done, for his creative instinct calls 
upon him to nurture that to which he has given birth. A 
baby is indeed “nothing but a cry.” 

In the 1880’s Wanamaker wrote to one of his sisters from 


Holland: 


Is the diamond-cutter to be envied? I’ve been watching one. He 
cuts and polishes. Then he puts aside the stone on which his skill has 
been expended and which he will never see again. He takes another 
stone—and goes through the same process. I am glad I will never be 
through cutting and polishing my store stone. I must keep at it like my 
religion—or I won’t have a precious stone. God is good who doesn’t 
ask me to put it aside, finished. 


Others did clear away the chips and the fallen trees, and 
the work of making the road fell largely on other shoul- 
ders, but it was always under John Wanamaker’s close 
supervision. He wanted it that way. His pioneering 
exploits would not have been written into the history of 
retail merchandising had it not been that way. He 
expressed the reason for the necessity of the leader’s, the 


34 JOHN WANAMAKER 


organizer’s, constant attention to the details of his business 
in colorful language: 


This imperfect old world is made up of imperfect beings. ‘The store 
is like a mechanical instrument, and gets out of tune except as its keys 


are touched by skillful and soulful fingers. 


On another occasion he put the thought into one preg- 
nant sentence: 


The foot of the farmer is the best fertilizer for the field. 


On March 24, 1916, Wanamaker’s diary records: 


I had the Chief Buyers—127 in all—to luncheon in the gray salon, 
8th floor, on Monday from 1 to 2:45, and on Tuesday from 12 to 1:45, 
the Asst. Buyers—157 in all. 


While in theory the buyers were each “as entirely inde- 
pendent in his own department as an individual owning a 
single store,” thus carrying out the second point of the 
Wanamaker idea of business, “to maintain the individuality 
of each section as much as if it were in a separate building,” 
all the other points of Wanamaker’s conception of retail 
merchandising demanded direct and constant contact with 
the head of the business. At the end of each day, in both 
Philadelphia and New York, the department heads brought 
their sales reports to the private office, where they were 
handed to the merchant at his desk. When more than brief 
comment was needed, an appointment was given for the fol- 
lowing day. Typical of Wanamaker’s talks to the assembled 
buyers is the following, taken at random from the steno- 
graphic record of buyers’ meetings: 


It is a time when a man ought to look over the year behind him and 
see where he has been wrong in his judgment in gathering his stock and 
in managing. 

For myself, | am very tired of wrestling with overstocks and it seems 
to me so childish to be loading up stuff that eats capital in interest and 
loses its bloom and value, and requires scientific surgery to cure. 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 35 


I believe that the next six weeks are going to be hard on jobbers and 
commission houses and concerns that have to carry stocks, and that this 
will be a time of opportunity to make money. 

It seems to me a piece of great folly to be carrying not only stocks of 
merchandise difficult to make a profit on, but stocks of assistants that for 
some reason or other have lost their bloom and that have proved them- 
selves unequal to the work committed to them to do. 

We want a clearance of stocks of merchandise and we want a clearance 
of inefficient helpers. ‘This does not mean an earthquake, but it means a 
deep plowing of all the soil to get ready to plant for a better harvest. 

The deep-sea fishing for the most valuable catch is for proper mer- 
chandise. 

The rug advertisement of this week was as fine as-we could have, but 
it sold no goods, and my conviction is, that since the people were here, 
and since the advertisement is read for other things, it must be read also 
for rugs and that something must have been the matter with the rugs 
that people didn’t want them. 


Wanamaker never tired of impressing on those who were 
responsible for the merchandise that they must be pioneers 
with him, alert for new ideas and daring to express them 
in the goods they offered. He told them that the chief 
element of success in retailing was not in advertising but 
in getting what the people want, and keeping your eyes on the parts of 
the world where new things are made, and in giving customers the best 
and newest things along the lines of their real and fancied needs. Our 
aim is to get goods. Our advertisement is merely to tell the people that 
we have them. I like an advertisement which merely describes what 
we have in the store. 


Wanamaker took a distinguished visitor to one of these 
conferences. When they returned to the private office, the 
visitor asked: “How do you do it? You covered so many 
things, and your criticisms were all about to-day’s condi- 
tions and to-morrow’s problems. You must have wonder- 
fully able scouts.” 

“Fiere are my scouts,” answered Wanamaker, putting 
two fingers over his eyes, “and here are their able aids,” 


36 JOHN WANAMAKER 
pointing to his feet. “I do have people shopping in the 


other stores, of course, all the time, but I depend upon 
myself for my knowledge of my own stores. Do you sup- 
pose I sit at this desk all day long? No, I am out on the 
floor.” 

Being “out on the floor” was the habit formed in the 
first days of Oak Hall that John Wanamaker never felt 
that he could afford to give up. He not only knew his 
stocks and how they were being displayed, but also how they 
were being sold. He was there not to spy or scold, but 
to encourage and inspire. His people knew this. It was 
the secret of the esprit de corps that General Grant noticed 
in 1879, and that made the Wanamaker stores express the 
personality of their founder as long as he lived. There was 
nothing that gave him greater joy than being “on the floor.” 
More than once he said that the most fruitful ideas that 
ever came to him—ideas of merchandise, selling methods, 
service, store planning and decoration, display of goods, 
advertising, expansion, and welfare of his people—were 
born of studying the stores in operation. 

In 1911, the Jubilee Year, an entry in the diary, dated 
New York, September 26, illustrates his devotion to busi- 
ness after half a century of it and also the fun he had 
init. He wrote: 


Hot! The thermo in this office is in the 80’s and feels like the 90’s 
as the humidity is so great. I am stopping down here until 9 to-night 





to a private show Miss is making of her part of the “fashion end.” 
Twenty and more of our Philadelphia chiefs are on the evening train and 
will be suppered here. I am perspiring all over and over, though the 


morning papers prophesied frost this week! 


Later the same evening, in his rooms at the Hotel Plaza, 
he added: 

“Such a wonderful opening of women’s dresses! Our 
girls wore the gowns in simple fashion and they were much 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 47, 


praised. Some of our own shoes, furs, and jewels were 
worn. It was a great revelation to the men, especially of 
what one section had in it and with the possibilities in the 
way of educating the whole House as to what other sections 
were doing. Miss certainly scored high in the estima- 
tion of us all.” 

Of his daily rounds Wanamaker made notes, jotting 
down whatever his eyes caught which he felt needed atten- 
tion or study. The private files contain sheafs of these 
notes, sometimes dictated, but generally in his own hand. 
They tell us why he remained all his life a mercantile 
pioneer. If John Wanamaker had left nothing but these 
notes, we could still assert that documentary evidence 
throws full light upon the secret of his success as a mer- 
chant. We might divide his observations into six cate- 
gories: on store planning; on display; on supply and 
demand; on quality; on taste; and on personnel. 

The new building in New York was completed in 1907 
and the new building in Philadelphia in 1911, when Wana- 
maker had been in business for himself just half a century. 
During all that time there had been constant alteration and 
expansion. Problems of store planning were, therefore, 
always in his mind. Wanamaker once told a friend that he 
could not remember a single month in half a century in 
which he did not have to decide upon some shift or change 
affecting the physical aspect of his stores. “When I was 
a youngster,” he said, “we were continually enlarging our 
premises at Sixth and Market Streets. And then I kept 
on the go between there and the lower Chestnut Street 
store. The Grand Depot never did stop growing, and on 
this spot the most strenuous time was the ten years that the 
new store was building. And in New York we were always 
changing things about—we still are!” In all this evolu- 
tion, which went on without ever interrupting the daily 





38 JOHN WANAMAKER 


business, Wanamaker’s subordinates brought suggestions to 
him and at times had to make important decisions them- 
selves. But the eye of the chief was on the work, and 
his yes or no, his commendation or condemnation, was based 
upon knowledge of what was needed as well as of what 
was going on. Into the new buildings he put the experi- 
ence of forty years of being “on the floor,” and he tried 
out the new Philadelphia store building in sections, never 
hesitating to change plans in the light of experience. 

To get most out of the display of goods was a life-long 
study with Wanamaker. Many of his ideas which seemed 
like intuitive flashes of genius were really the fruition of 
what had long been stored up in his mind while he was 
“on the floor.” Problems of display fascinated him. And 
he was never satisfied with any solution. He used to keep 
modifying displays and introducing new features up to the 
very moment the store opened. He was on the lookout for 
errors of judgment, not to chide, but to help educate his 
people. Over and over again he would tell them that 
blunders were largely due to not thinking. For example, 
one day he got out of the elevator on the rug floor, where 
he had his private office, and noticed what seemed to him 
to be a rather ordinary rug hung from a pillar opposite 
the elevator exit. He went up to inspect, and found this 
rug marked at a low price, which did not seem to him very 
cheap at that. On the other side of the pillar was a Persian 
runner that was “a beauty,” as he expressed it. It was 
expensive, but attractively priced. Calling the man respon- 
sible for display, he pointed out to him that where a thou- 
sand people would see it he had hung a rug of no drawing 


* Walking one day on Chestnut Street with a friend, from whom the 
biographer has this story, Wanamaker paused before a store in whose front 
window was a large sign, “Closed for alterations until—” “That firm. 
ought to get out of the merchandising business,” he remarked. ‘A store 
that’s alive can no more close for a month than you or I could stop living 
and then expect to start again.” 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 39 


power at all, and that he had put a splendid rug that 
anyone would want to look at where it would not be seen 
by one-tenth of the people that had to see the other rug. 
“Don’t tell me you just didn’t think,” remarked Wana- 
maker. “The position of the rug says that.” 

Studying supply and demand is the merchant’s greatest, 
as well as his most difficult, task, Wanamaker frequently 
declared. Overstocking meant losses that could easily wipe 
out the profits of a good season or carrying over goods that 
were not fresh. Understocking was harmful to the repu- 
tation of the store. Through years, in talks with buyers, 
ran the constant refrain: “Don’t ever allow your sales- 
people to have to say, ‘We’ll have it in a few days,’ or, 
‘We can order it for you.’ The business of a merchant is 
to have the goods.” The probability of the demand had 
to be considered. One effective way of doing it was to 
watch customers, note what they asked for, and be on the 
alert day after day for decreasing or increasing demands. 
Because he has so many departments whose experience can 
help other departments, the large general merchant enjoys 
an advantage over the merchant carrying one line of goods 
—if he appreciates this fact and knows how to make the 
departments help one another. Wanamaker was the first 
to develop an elaborate system of reporting, by which the 
heads of the different departments had the benefit of ten- 
dencies observed in other departments; and other general 
stores were studied as well. 

If we were writing the history of the business instead 
of the life of the man, we should be tempted to point out 
that the story of an establishment like Wanamaker’s was 
a history of changing styles. Departments of prime impor- 
tance and large sales, such as veiling, corsets, gloves, and 
fancy underwear, no longer hold the place they used to 
occupy. In readjusting the space and sales force for depart- 


40 JOHN WANAMAKER 


ments like these (they are given only as illustrations—there 
are many others) the merchant has had to look ahead and 
study the habits of the people. Men are as changeable as 
women. How many there are to-day who ‘never wear 
heavy garments at any period of the year! Houses, office 
buildings, and public conveyances are much better heated 
than they used to be. The demand gradually lessened for 
heavy woolen suits and overcoats—what they used to call 
“winter weight.” As for underclothing, the days of cam- 
el’s hair and Dr. Jaeger are past for men under fifty, most 
of whom wear summer weight the year round. In the first 
decade of automobiles, everybody dressed for motoring in 
special clothing as different from their ordinary clothes 
as if they were going bicycling. It is not only in women’s 
gowns and hats that fashions change radically and suddenly. 

In his walks about the store Wanamaker had an eagle 
eye for merchandise that he thought was not up to his 
standard. He had the habit of appearing anywhere at any 
time, and he did not hesitate to look at merchandise when 
customers were around. If there was a line that he ques- 
tioned, he had an article sent up to his office. When com- 
plaints came in that had to do with the quality of the goods 
sold, he would make a personal investigation. During the 
first thirty years he was in business Wanamaker had a con- 
stant fight with manufacturers to get goods that were “all 
wool and a yard wide.” It was possible to find ready-made 
clothing that satisfied him from the samples. But not only 
did he have to be on his guard to see that all the goods 
were up to specification, but bitter experience taught him 
that manufacturers, when they got a line established, would 
fail to maintain the quality that gave them their reputation. 
The retailer, standing between the manufacturer and the 
public, and guaranteeing the goods he sold, bore the blame 
when there was any falling off in the standard makes. 


MERCANTILE PIONEER AI 


Wanamaker faced this same condition in aggravated form 
after becoming a general storekeeper. He maintained a 
laboratory and had tests made, because he believed that it 
was the retailer’s business to know that the goods he sold 
were “right.” 

In 1891 he wrote: 


The trouble with business of the U. S. (but it is fast improving) has 
been that we all wanted to get rich so fast that when we struck something 
the people wanted, instead of keeping the standard up, we sought to make 
it cheaper by using inferior material and less labor. What has made the 
English rich has been keeping up the standard. 

But as our country settles down to a fixed destiny, and ceases to wander 
and speculate so much, we also are learning that business houses must be 
prolonged by their good repute, so that the trade mark shall be their best 
advertisement. 

New England has already learned the necessity of thoroughness. ‘The 
disabilities in the way of being distant from fuel and metals are turning 
out to the advantage of those thus handicapped, demanding of them in 
competition to offer a higher standard in their productions; and Pennsyl- 
vania must fall into the same track. 


When Wanamaker started a restaurant, it was not long 
before the quality of the food attracted people in greater 
numbers than could be handled. Old Major Washburn, 
of the exclusive Philadelphia Club, wondered why the club 
chef could not make croquettes like Wanamaker’s, and he 
decided to get the Wanamaker recipe. He asked for it 
point blank, and was given it without hesitation. Still the 
croquettes were not the same. Upon making further inquir- 
ies he was referred directly to the Wanamaker chef, who 
said that the secret of the croquettes was simple—he used 
only the best veal. 

Worship, of course, is not the word to use in describing 
Wanamaker’s attitude toward beautiful things; but it was 
pretty nearly worship. There was something of the Vic- 
torian in him, as in all of his generation; but he outgrew the 


42 JOHN WANAMAKER 


taste of the nineteenth century more quickly than his con- 
temporaries. It is not too much to say that back in the 
1880’s and the 1890’s one of the great struggles of his life 
was to make the hodge-podge of a building that evolved 
from the Grand Depot represent himself. In this hercu- 
lean task he succeeded fairly well. The old Wanamaker’s, 
on the inside, kept well ahead of the times in the store fur- 
nishings. The elegant simplicity of the new Wanamaker’s 
is simply the fulfillment of its builder’s dream—a dream 
that had already been partly realized in the face of handi- 
caps that a less indomitable spirit would have come to believe 
were insuperable. 

Wanamaker said that his stores would betray a public 
trust if they offered for sale any merchandise that was not 
in good taste. Not long after he had opened his furni- 
ture department, he called the head one day and declared 
that the furniture in the store was a disgrace. “I wouldn’t 
have it in my house,” he said, “and I won’t have anything 
in my store that I wouldn’t be willing to buy and use 
myself.” He issued an ultimatum: either John Wana- 
maker was to carry only the very best of furniture or John 
Wanamaker would go out of the furniture business. ‘The 
furniture head answered that the things Wanamaker 
objected to people wanted, as was proven by the fact that 
they bought them. “Well, they oughtn’t to want them!” 
exclaimed Wanamaker. “If we can’t get them to want 
better stuff than that, I am willing to close up this depart- 
ment.” ‘Would you have me buy antiques?” asked the 
head, venturing what he thought was a joke. “Yes,” said 
Wanamaker, “buy antiques. Buy lines of the best furni- 
ture you can get your hands on. Through the antiques, 
people may get interested in the good reproductions.” 
These words marked a new era in the furniture industry 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 43 


in the United States, and in the spirit and methods of 
selling furniture in general stores. 

We could give many other examples of how Wana- 
maker’s innate good taste and his determination that the 
stores should carry nothing that was cheap and vulgar kept 
him from yielding to the temptation of developing his 
unique establishments into department stores." After the 
period of rapid expansion from 1877 to 1883, no new line 
was added until Wanamaker was sure that he was going to 
be able to put the new department on a footing where it 
could compete in quality and taste with the best specialty 
shops. His correspondence bears eloquent witness to this 
fact. With his start in the field and the selling potentiali- 
ties of his vast establishments he could have made money 
in any new venture. But his business was no money-making 
mechanism, with volumes of sales as the goal. It was his 
life. It was himself. And when he added a new depart- 
ment, it was always as a pioneer and originator, revolu- 
tionizing old methods and setting new standards. 

A volume could be written about Wanamaker and the 
piano business, into which he entered as late as 1899. He 
had been thinking of pianos for fifteen years. The piano 
trade was in a chaotic condition. When, finally, he decided 
to sell pianos, instruments of standard makes, within the 
reach of all, were for the first time sold at a fixed price, 
like other merchandise. To accomplish this reform Wana- 


* “TI do not deal in bankrupt stuff or stuff hard to sell,” declared Wana- 
maker to S. S$. McClure in an interview in 1912. The private files bear 
eloquent testimony to the truth of this statement. Wanamaker consistently 
turned down “bargain stocks” offered to him, except in rare instances when 
they happened to fit into what he had planned to offer to the public and 
were at the same time of Wanamaker quality. To his buyers he said over 
and over again that they should not be influenced by reduced prices, but 
should buy only what they felt the people wanted and “pay fair prices.” 
He said that the guiding principle of the Wanamaker stores was to “find 
out what the people want and have it for them, instead of helping manufac- 
turers, wholesalers, and unsuccessful retailers to unload their goods.” 


44. JOHN WANAMAKER 


maker had to buy control of manufacturing companies and 
go into the business of making pianos. Undertaken in the 
public interest, and against the advice of some of his asso- 
ciates, the piano departments, which soon stocked all kinds 
of musical instruments, became and have remained an out- 
standing success of the Wanamaker stores.’ 

It was no parvenu who inherited the Stewart building in 
1896. Wanamaker was both worthy of the setting and 
ready for it. How he displayed his goods as well as the 
goods he displayed became the talk of New York during 
the very first season. A man who did not know or care 
much about business history, and to whom the forty-five 
years of John Wanamaker’s experience in mercantile pio- 
neering counted for nothing, wrote in 1897, before the 
New York store was a year old, that Wanamaker was giv- 
ing New York merchants an example of perfect taste in 
display and in merchandise. He was astonished at a fact 
that would have had nothing of surprise in it, had he known 
the man and his preparation for New York. 

The last category of observation in the daily floor rounds 
was paying attention to the human element. In 1908, 
there is a diary record of November 27: 


I go all day from place to place screwing everything up for the 


* At the National Convention of Piano Dealers in 1900, when they were 
discussing the probability of department stores following the example of 
John Wanamaker, one of the delegates stated on the platform: “If the 
department stores do start selling pianos, the dealers will have only them- 
selves to blame. Ever since I have been in business, I have noticed that the 
dealers have not adhered to the one-price system and have had no fixed values 
for their pianos. The lack of confidence between dealers and customers is 
at the bottom of the department-store movement.” And after three years of 
the Wanamaker innovation, the Musical Courier Extra, July 26, 1902, said: 
“Through his enormous power in the industrial world Mr. Wanamaker has 
opened a path to correct the evils of the disorganized piano industry, with 
the absence of mercantile law in the conduct of its affairs.” After nine years 
in the business, Wanamaker advertised: ‘No other retail piano store in the 
world ever before carried the stock that we carry; and we might add that 
in all probability no other ever will.” There were at that time over one 
thousand instruments in both stores. 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 45 


Christmas month and giving lessons to one after another as I meet them 
on my way. 

To-day a man falls down or is tempted to leave, and I must go out 
with a life line and rescue him, and the same thing goes on to-morrow 
with some other weak brother. Without watch and care our organization 
would break in some places every day. 


And on December 15 of the same year: 


I am debating questions of organization all the time, putting in new 
timber, making new bolts, screwing up loose joints, and rebuilding the old 
worn-out fences all around. 


Later, in writing of the store family and of adventures 
in mercantile education, the pioneering achievements of 
John Wanamaker in his relations with his personnel will 
be told.* But there is place here for one illustration of the 
kind of watchfulness that gave, and retained for, the Wana- 
maker establishments the reputation for service. One day, 
in the course of his rounds, Wanamaker noticed that a 
woman was standing in front of a counter vainly endeavoring 
to attract the attention of two saleswomen who were chat- 
ting with the wrapping clerk. The man whom his fellow- 
citizens regarded as the most eminent Philadelphian (this 
incident occurred in the later years) stepped behind the 
counter and asked what was wanted. He had begun to 
bring out boxes when the girls suddenly realized what was 
happening. When they rushed up, he yielded his place 
to them with a smile. He said nothing. He did not 
have to. 

Nowhere in his papers is there evidence that Wanamaker 
worried about prices. He wanted everything in his estab- 
lishments to be marked fairly, and his attitude during the 
World War and afterward is indicative of how he felt about 
profiteering. But he did not pretend to sell goods by 
making the price the attraction. This was the stand he 


* See below, chaps. xix and xx. 


46 JOHN WANAMAKER 


took when he was twenty-four years old, in the second year 
of the Civil War, and he adhered to it rigidly throughout 
his mercantile career. He built up his reputation on the 
quality of his goods. and invited the public to buy from 
him on the basis of “fair prices for the value.” Marked- 
down goods and sales always carried the announcement that 
what he had to offer were “Wanamaker quality.” It was 
always possible for other merchants to undersell John Wan- 
amaker with bargain lots and with stocks “fon commission” 
that were not guaranteed. Once when he was taxed by a 
new buyer, who had come to Wanamaker’s under a misap- 
prehension, with not being “a good merchant,” Wanamaker 
gently corrected him. “You mean a good horse dealer,” 
he said. 

The great success of the experiment of “invading New 
York,” as trade journals of the day called it, led to the 
belief that John Wanamaker contemplated further expan- 
sion of his business. In May, 1899, a visit to Chicago, 
where he spent a day in the examination of one of the large 
department stores, led to the rumor that he was going to 
Jaunch a Wanamaker’s in Chicago. The rumors persisted, 
and were frequently noticed in the Chicago press. They 
were revived in 1902, when Wanamaker went to Chicago 
to consult the architect Burnham. It was not known then 
that he had Burnham in mind to build the new Philadel- 
phia store. In 1900 the Boston newspapers announced that 
Wanamaker had bought the old Music Hall property and 
other parcels of real estate in the block bounded by Wash- 
ington, Bromfield, Tremont, and Winter Streets, for the 
purpose of opening a Boston Wanamaker’s. In rgor it 
was stated that Wanamaker had combined with Marshall 
Field of Chicago and Jordan Marsh & Co. of Boston to 
make “the greatest colossal mercantile combination which 
the world has ever seen.” During the same year it was 


MERCANTILE PIONEER 47 


confidently announced that Wanamaker had taken options 
on a large Euclid Avenue frontage in Cleveland. There 
is no confirmation of any of these rumors in Wanamaker’s 
correspondence or diaries. Proposals were made to him 
from time to time by interested real-estate brokers to enter 
the general-store field in other cities, but none of them was 
seriously entertained. 

_ He refused persistent offers to enter the mail-order busi- 
ness, notably in St. Louis. These rumors are worth 
recording, however, for they indicate the impression that 
was made on the mercantile world by Wanamaker’s ability 
to do in New York, where every condition seemed unfavor- 
able, what he had accomplished in Philadelphia. 

There is no doubt, on the other hand, that between 1899 
and 1906 Wanamaker seriously entertained the idea of estab- 
lishing in Europe an American store of the kind he had 
been instrumental in developing in the United States. In 
1899 he formulated a plan for organizing a limited com- 
pany in London, and for six or seven years he had the fun 
of considering sites in Oxford Street, at Trafalgar Square, 
on High Holborn, and on the new Kingsway. It was a 
dream of his to establish a store in Paris.* On his sixty- 
eighth birthday, in 1906, the newspapers stated that John 
Wanamaker had perfected plans for an immense depart- 
ment store in Berlin. Although they had no facts that had 
been corroborated, they announced the details of the plan 
as follows: 

He has bought a block for 40,000,000 marks, and will include in its 
astonishing amplitude a hotel, roof garden, concert hall, and a mammoth 
restaurant. The building will be eight stories high, constructed under 
the direction of a distinguished American architect, and two years will 
be required for its completion. The Berlin papers say it will be a world 
wonder. 


* See extract from Wanamaker’s diary, dated Paris, May 20, 1903, which 
is reproduced in chap. vi, below, p. 78. 


48 JOHN WANAMAKER 


There was so much to be accomplished in expanding the 
Stewart business and in completing the new buildings in 
New York and Philadelphia that Wanamaker did not pur- 
sue his European projects, which were never really concrete 
plans. Gordon Selfridge, of Marshall Field & Co., 
took up the idea of an American store in London. The 
Paris plans were abandoned after the death of Thomas B. 
Wanamaker, and the last entry concerning it in John Wana- 
maker’s diary, August 9, 1909, gives as the reason: 


We have so much on our hands in business in which we have experience 
that to take up anything that we know nothing about is quite impolitic. 


From other allusions in the Wanamaker correspondence 
we are able to state that the principal reason for not going 
farther afield in mercantile pioneering than New York was 
the same that had prevented him from following out the 
idea of chain clothing stores in the early 1870’s. The Wana- 
maker business—and all the pioneering that went with it— 
was a purely individual venture, built up by one man and 
dominated by his personality. It succeeded because he was 
able to give personal attention to it. He feared that if he 
went farther afield “the foot of the farmer” could not 
continue to be everywhere “the fertilizer for the field.” 


CHAPTER IV 
THE HABIT OF EUROPE 


FTER Wanamaker retired from the Postmaster-Gen- 
eralship, the long trip through Mexico and the West 
in the spring of 1893 sufficed for the vacation of that year. 
It was not until 1894 that he resumed his visits to Europe 
after a lapse of seven years. This trip was the beginning 
of a period, which lasted for nearly twenty years, when 
much time was devoted to foreign travel. Wanamaker 
was getting what he called “the habit of Europe.” And 
yet, with the exception of the first few years of the Grand 
Depot, the decades from 1894 to 1912 were those of his 
heaviest business burdens and of his most critical problems. 
It was a period, also, of intense activity, development, and 
changes at Bethany. Working ahead at high pressure and 
gradually going from middle age into what for most men 
is old age, Wanamaker found in ocean travel and in Euro- 
pean watering places and cities the recreation and change 
that he needed. He seemed to come back from Europe 
every year bubbling over with energy and good spirits, and 
able to take up instantly the thread of a business deal or 
problem. 

It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Y. M. C. A. that 
drew him to London at the end of May, 1894. He was on 
the platform with his old friend, George Williams,’ at 
the Mansion House meeting, with the Lord Mayor presid- 
ing, and at Exeter Hall when John G. Paton, of the Fiji 


* Queen Victoria recognized the Y. M. C. A. jubilee by knighting the vet- 
eran London merchant. Thereafter he was known as Sir George Williams. 


49 


50 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Islands, told his memorable story. He was among the 
honored guests at the service in Westminster Abbey when 
the Bishop of London preached. In his private office hangs 
a photograph of the delegates to the Jubilee Convention, 
taken at Windsor Castle. Wanamaker considered this one 
of the memorable occasions of his life. He was presented 
to Queen Victoria, and was the spokesman of the American 
delegates in thanking the Queen for her hospitality. Wan- 
amaker and Theodore L. Cuyler addressed the convention 
on Y. M. C. A. work in the United States, where its growth 
had been phenomenal. The Philadelphia merchant received 
a great ovation when Sir George Williams introduced him 
as the “first exponent of the profession of Y. M. C. A. 
secretary, to which our.organization owes its international | 
character and enormous influence.” 

Wanamaker stayed on in London for some weeks after 
the convention. He had discovered that his status in the 
English capital was different from what it had been before. 
Not much attention was paid to mere merchants, no matter 
how colossal their establishments. It was a different story 
when a member of the Cabinet in the last American admin- 
istration was introduced. He now had a title to recognition 
in official and social circles. As Wanamaker’s interest in 
postal matters was still strong, he enjoyed the opportunity 
of seeing the work of the British Post Office. 

In a letter written to the Bethany Union from Carlsbad 
on July 9 he spoke of having come from London by way of 
Paris, and described delightfully his visit to Nuremberg. 
A great change had come over the man in the way he viewed 
things European and in the interest he manifested in every 
phase of European life. The tourist viewpoint and atti- 
tude were beginning to leave him. 

This fact is more marked in the correspondence and jour- 
nal of the summer of 1895. He was at Carlsbad again in 


THE HABIT OF EUROPE 51 


August with his wife and daughters, and he recorded his 
impressions of drives and tramps through the Austrian 
Alps. He could not stay at the Grand Hotel Pupp in an 
armchair, content to drink the waters and listen to the music. 
Even when supposed to be resting he had to be “up and 
doing.” Day after day mountain resorts were visited. 
Sometimes, with guests whom he had invited to come to 
Carlsbad, he went far afield. And in everything he wrote 
we find a vivid appreciation of the beauties of mountain 
scenery. To Henry Clay Trumbull he said one day, in 
showing him a panorama that he had long loved: “Look 
at it, and then close your eyes. Now, with your eyes closed, 
let every detail of this wonderful picture be photographed 
in your memory.” 

The diary gives an intimate glimpse of a family coaching 
trip in France. On Tuesday, September 10, 1895, the 
Wanamaker coach left the Hotel Liverpool, Paris. Rod- 
man Wanamaker drove. Huis sister Lillie was on the box 
with him. John Wanamaker, on the next seat, had as his 
guests Mahomet Ali, brother to the “young Khedive of 
Egypt,” and Baroness Ruxlaben. The coach was white, 
blue, and black, and was drawn by four grays and blacks. 
“To the tune of Howlett’s horn, we wheeled around to 
the Champs Elysées, and a quarter of an hour later swept 
under the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, a happy party.” 
Through the Bois to Saint Cloud, where horses were 
changed, and then on to Versailles, with luncheon at the 
Reservoirs. In the afternoon they went by way of Marly 
and the forest of Saint-Germain to Mantes, where the night 
was passed at the Hotel Grandart. “A royal dinner was 
served at 8:45. Paris could not have surpassed it.” 

On Wednesday there was “breakfast in a French garden. 
Luncheon at the relay station at Eure.” ‘Toward dusk the 
cathedral of Evreux “loomed in sight.” At the Hotel 


52 JOHN WANAMAKER 


de la Biche, “we faced canteloupe, roast chicken, and fine 
venison at the table, with the bells of Normandy chiming 
while we ate.” 

The next day there was luncheon “at the tiniest hostelry, 
the Hotel du Solice d’Or on the river at Thibaultville. 
Two-hour rest for the horses, and at 3:30 we started off, 
taking up the baroness two miles ahead, where she had gone 
blackberrying. We halted for the night at the Hotel 
Louis d’Or, Pont l’Evéque, the oldest, queerest, quaintest 
inn of all we have seen.” | 

On Friday morning on the road “we picked up Mrs. 
R. W. and John, Jr. and Nini, who drove from Cabourg 
to meet us.” There was luncheon at Trouville, and then 
the afternoon drive through Deauville, Villers, Houlgate, 
and Dives, to Cabourg “to stay over Sunday at the Grand 
Hotel.” On Saturday, the coach was taken out for a drive 
to lunch at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, where John Wanamaker 
reported: “As I write this in soft sunny light, by the edge 
of the sea, with the sound of the surf breaking on the smooth 
beach at my feet, luncheon is calling.” And later “it proved 
to be a merry one.” Followed a graphic description of the 
abbey churches of William and Matilda at Caen, the old 
houses, and the river running through a forest. 

With the exception of the later voyage to India, the long- 
est tour Wanamaker ever made was between January and 
June of 1896, just before the entry into the McKinley- 
Bryan campaign and to New York business life. His wife 
and sons urged him to visit the Holy Land, knowing what 
this would mean to him in his Sunday-school work. He 
had always wanted to go, but had never felt that he could 
be away long enough for the journey. At that time the 
Mediterranean trips, where the whole voyage was made on 
a steamer under charter to a tourist agency, was just coming 


THE HABIT OF EUROPE 53 


into vogue. People who knew no foreign languages, who 
had limited time, and who did not want to overtax their 
physical strength, were beginning to find the dreams of 
years realizable through this new form of travel. We 
have learned from companions on the Mediterranean trip 
that the marked characteristics of Wanamaker’s sight-seeing 
were his energy, his ability to take everything in rapidly 
and not forget it, and his irrepressible sense of humor. “He 


? we are told, “and he never missed 


was gay all the time, 
the opportunity of having his little joke with the literal- 
minded. The captain was a very serious person, and 
Mr. Wanamaker loved to tease him. When skirting the 
coast of Greece, coming up on deck early one morning, 
Mr. Wanamaker ran into the captain. Pointing to the 
mountains that were reaching to the clouds, Mr. Wana- 
maker asked, ‘Captain, what is that?? He replied, ‘Snow.’ 
Mr. Wanamaker exclaimed, ‘Why, my steward told me it 
was Greece! What am I to believe?’ ” 

But in the Holy Land he was sober and reverent, and 
his detailed knowledge of topography and legends, as well 
as his ability to outquote any preacher on board in biblical 
allusions, were noted by everybody. To one of his inti- 
mate friends he said that when he had visited the Holy 
Sepulcher, he waited until no one was around but an old 
woman in charge. Then he slipped some money into the 
woman’s hand, and, “yielding to an irresistible temptation, 
I stretched myself out on the tomb.” | 

The trip included glimpses of North Africa and Turkey, 
and a voyage up the Nile. Wanamaker said that he never 
got over the desire to go back to Cairo, and just stay there. 
Why he had this desire he could not explain. He loved 
Beirut, also, and frequently alluded to the two ranges of 
mountains rising behind the town. The mission work of 


54 JOHN WANAMAKER 


his own church he saw at Beirut—his first personal contact 
with Presbyterian foreign missionaries on the field. In his 
wife’s name and in his own he gave a contribution to the 
work among children, and he promised to return to Beirut. 

In a Sunday-school talk on the Mars Hill speech of 
St. Paul, after his return, he described the Acropolis as he 
felt it when he sailed into the Pirzeus, and when he was up 
there, visiting the ruins. His picture of the ride up the 
hill, of the Acropolis and its temples, and of the site of the 
Areopagus will be recognized as faithful and accurate by 
everyone who has been there. He had some notes, of 
course; but we are frequently struck with the photographic 
quality of his memory, which, however, did not prevent 
him from feeling things as well as seeing them. 

Wanamaker left the cruise at Naples, and after stopping 
at Rome and Florence, went to Carlsbad for his cure. But 
he did not stay long, despite the urging of his sons. He 
was eager to get into the political fray and to begin the 
negotiations that ended in taking over the business of Hil- 
ton, Hughes & Co. in New York. When he returned he 
said at Bethany: “While away I visited fifteen of the 
nations of the Old World. It is far from easy to tell you 
how pleased I am to end my twentieth voyage across the 
Atlantic.” Although nearly sixty years old, he still per- 
sisted in declaring, as he had done a decade before, that 
his big work and his best work were still in the future. 
Pleased as he was to come home, the half-year of travel 
had done much to make possible bearing the strain of the 
months ahead. 

As we have seen, the next three years were those of the 
colorful episode of Wanamaker’s effort to break the Penn- 
sylvania Republican machine. Coupled with the business 
venture in New York, his political activities precluded any 


THE HABIT OF EUROPE 55 


long absence from home. It was not until 1899, there- 
fore, that Wanamaker had the opportunity for another long 
sojourn abroad. In 1898 he had contented himself with 
a fortnight in London, and returned by way of Liverpool, 
where he spoke at the World’s Christian Endeavor Conven- 
tion.” He allowed the ocean voyage to take the place of 
his Carlsbad cure. But in 1899 he went on one of the first 
North German Lloyd’s Midnight Sun cruises. To the 
Bethany Bible Union he wrote from Paris on June 25: 


Our ship slowed up off the port of Cherbourg Thursday night at 
five minutes to ten, and a little tender came off out into the stream, 
and took off one hundred and twenty-five passengers and their trunks. 
A special train was waiting, as there were not enough hotel accommoda- 
tions for so many in the little seaport town, and it was twelve o’clock 
before the little bell tinkled and trumpet blew that started us for Paris— 
all night we had to sit up in the cars, but as daylight came at three o’clock 
it was interesting to see the French peasants at work in the fields, and the 
little villages wake up to Friday morning. 

We rolled into Paris at ten minutes after eight o’clock, two hours and 
three quarters after time, very tired, very hungry and very glad to be 
again on steady ground. It is strange, though, that for hours after you 
come ashore after a voyage, you feel the motion of the vessel and swing 
about as if you were yet on the whirling, rolling, swinging sea. 

Our coming here is to fill in the time while the steamer Auguste Vic- 
toria is at Hamburg unloading cargo, coaling, and provisioning for the 
Norway trip. I leave here for Hamburg on Thursday, the 29th of June, 
at noon, and to avoid night travel I stop over all night Thursday at 
Cologne, where the next morning I go to the great Cathedral and say 
prayers for myself and those I love and then at 8:29 go on by rail to 
Berlin, to stay all night and part of the next day, leaving Saturday about 
noon for Hamburg, to take the ship for nearly a month upon the North 
Sea. 


A Bethany publication gives us another interesting let- 
ter, written in the midst of the trip: 


*Dr. Francis E. Clark, founder of the C. E., movement, always visited 
the Wanamakers when he came to Philadelphia. Mrs. Wanamaker regarded 
him as one of the greatest and most useful of religious leaders, and kept in 
close touch with him until her death. See below, p. 350. 


56 JOHN WANAMAKER 


But the chief thing of which I must write is the midnight sun. We 
saw the sun set at twelve o’clock midnight Saturday and in a few minutes 
rise and begin another day. 

There has been no darkness except about two hours on Thursday night, 
when it was for those two hours like twilight and any one could read 
without a candle. 

It is an awe-inspiring sight to see the sun acting so strangely. To go 
to bed in broad daylight when your watch says it is past midnight is very 
odd. 

The sky is full of beautiful colors—last night to me the color pre- 
dominating was purple. Great plumes of blue and purple shot up from 
the crown of the sun. 

At the eventful moment when the sun was riding up anew into the 
sky the band saluted it and the passengers of the ship formed in line 
two by two and marched around the ship after the band. 

I believe I thought of all my friends and wished for them to enjoy 
this wonderful sight. We are on the sea for the next two weeks, our 
next stopping-place after the North Cape being Spitzbergen, the point 
from which expeditions start for the North Pole. It is a wilderness of 
stupendous glaciers, and mysterious ice-caves. ‘The ice fox and reindeer 
inhabit the cliffs and islands. Numerous walruses tumble about in the 
water with sea birds and eider ducks and seals, 

I am pleased to say we are all well and I can walk five miles a day. 

Very faithfully, 


Joun TuanKFut.! 


On the Fourth of July, at Odde, Norway, his fellow- 
cruisers chose him to give the American oration of the day. 
The German orator was Count Metternich, A week 
later they signed birthday resolutions “near Spitzbergen, 
July 11, 1899.” But the most memorable event of the trip 
was the interview with Kaiser Wilhelm. As the Auguste 
Victoria was off the coast of Norway, the imperial yacht 
was seen. The yacht signaled that the Kaiser would come 
on board. When he made his visit he said that he wanted 

* Wanamaker used to love signing his letters by fanciful names, reflecting 


his mood of the moment. He once liked a book called John Ploughman— 
and this was his name to friends at the bottom of letters for a long time. 


THE HABIT OF EUROPE 57 


to meet the most prominent American aboard. Captain 
Kaempff sent for John Wanamaker. Wilhelm II received 
the American merchant in the captain’s cabin and talked on 
business affairs for nearly an hour. Wanamaker afterward 
remarked upon the shrewdness of the Kaiser’s questions. He 
seemed more the business man than the sovereign. When 
Wanamaker asked him whether he purposed visiting Amer- 
ica, he answered, “The possibility is not entirely excluded. 
If a boat is being built which covers forty miles an hour, 
my coming is sure. At present it would be rather difficult 
for me to be out of touch with Germany from five to six 
days.” * 

When he left, the Kaiser told Wanamaker that he and 
his fellow-passengers were welcome to visit the Hohenzol- 
lern. Later, after advantage had been taken of this invi- 
tation, a telegram was sent to the Kaiser: 


The delightful visit of Y. I. M., July 19, 1899, on board the 
Auguste Victoria, and the gracious permission to inspect Y. I. M.’s yacht 
Hohenzollern has made this day never to be forgotten. The under- 
signed begs therefore Y. I. M. in the name of the passengers, to ten- 
der you their sincerest thanks. 

Joun WaNAMAKER 


* This account is taken not from Wanamaker’s recollections, but from the 
Taeglische Zeitung, Hamburg, August 18, 1899. It must be remembered 
that wireless telegraphy and radio were not thought of at that time. When 
he returned to New York, Wanamaker told the reporters at Quarantine, 
“To make the freedom of conversation of one gentleman with another the 
subject of an interview for newspaper publication does not seem to me to 
be proper. But I can say that I was greatly impressed with the wide scope of 
the Kaiser’s thinking and of his great desire to inform himself on what 
American citizens were developing. I believe the Emperor to be broad- 
minded. He has not the narrowness that ill-informed persons sometimes 
attribute to him. To me he seemed to be filled with a high purpose, not 
only to be a ruler, but to advance the welfare and happiness of his people. 
Very sure I am that his pride in the traditions and present glory of the 
German Empire will not cloud his appreciation of our country which is in 
no inconsiderable part German-American. There can be no question of 
doubt that it will be no fault of the youny and vigorous Kaiser if the 
relations between America and Germany do not have the closest and most 
cordial character.” 


58 JOHN WANAMAKER 


The Kaiser answered: 


HERRN JoHN WANAMAKER 

DampFerR AuGusTE VICTORIA, 

GUDVANGEN. 

Es ist mir eine Freude gewesen, den Passagieren der Auguste Victoria 
die Besichtigung der Hohenxollern gewihren zu koennen; bitte denselben 
meinen Dank fiir das freundliche telegramm auszusprechen. Ich wiinsche 
der Auguste Victoria gliickliche Fahrt und Heimkehr. 


WILHELM 


Rea 


There were other countries visited in the various trips 
during the years following the resumption of voyages to 
Europe, notably Switzerland. But virtually all the com- 
ments in Wanamaker’s correspondence about Europe refer 
to England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. His 
Austrian experiences seem to be limited to Carlsbad and the 
mountains of Bohemia. He probably visited Vienna, but 
we do not find him either in the Styrian Alps or in the 
Tyrol. He preferred the smaller German cities to Munich, 
and London and Paris to Berlin. Only for a few years did 
he have any admiration for German taste—and that was a 
passing phase, which affected Americans generally at the 
beginning of the twentieth century. It is evident that he 
did not love high mountains, with snow and glaciers, nearly 
as much as lower ranges, where he could see valleys and 
human habitations. We find little comment in his letters 
on lonely places. Nature, animate and inanimate, was at 
her best with him when there was the accompaniment of 
some human life or activity, or when it affected some other 
sense than that of sight. He loved to hear the birds and 
smell the flowers. 

After the final destruction of his hopes of becoming a 


*The original of the telegram is in the safe in Wanamaker’s private 


office. 


THE HABIT OF EUROPE 59 


Republican party leader in Pennsylvania or of going to the 
Senate, Wanamaker felt the need of rest for a year or two, 
and confined his European trips mostly to Carlsbad, after 
brief stops in London or Paris or both cities. This was 
greatly to the delight of Mrs. Wanamaker, who was unable 
to stand traveling in her husband’s ruthlessly tireless way. 
They were frequently at the Grand Hotel Pupp, and there 
they met people of all nations, with the inevitable result 
of broader social contacts and a broader view of all that 
went to make up the world in which they lived. 


CHAPTER V 


TO INDIA AND BACK 


N the autumn of 1901, yielding to the urging of his 
family, who felt that he was wearing himself out with 
his many incessant activities, Wanamaker went to Europe 
for the winter. He had no definite object in view, except 
the determination to revisit Egypt. Of this his physicians 
approved. ‘They told him that he should not go to Lon- 
don and Paris in the winter, and they knew that he would 
be a fish out of water on the Riviera. After the first spell 
of the beauty wore off, Wanamaker would have seen noth- 
ing to commend and everything to condemn at Nice and 
Monte Carlo. In December we find him at Bertolini’s 
Palace Hotel at Naples, taking passage for the East on 
the Hamburg-America liner Hamburg. Instead of stop- 
ping at Egypt for any length of time, he re-embarked on 
the North German Lloyd Grosser Kurfiirst, and spent 
Christmas in the Suez Canal. A longer stretch than he 
had ever had in his life of a sea voyage without friends 
put him in a meditative frame of mind. On a small sheet 
of paper in his own handwriting, the biographer discovered 
in his desk a prayer that he had preserved for twenty years. 
It was written “at Midnight, 31 Dec. 1901, approaching 
Colombo, Ceylon.” In it the traveler said: “I give myself 
to please and obey Thee, asking that Thou wilt deign to be 
my guide at every step of my life.” It ended with the plea: 
“Oh, Lord, help and hold me on the Indian Ocean near 
India!” 
He had evidently been reading up, as was his custom, on 
60 


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62 JOHN WANAMAKER 


the things he hoped to see, and undoubtedly, from the list 
of books he took, he was much more interested in mission- 
ary problems in India than in the politics and history of 
Great Britain’s greatest possession. 

In another place we discovered his New Year resolutions, 
on a small piece of paper, with ruled lines, evidently torn 
out of a notebook. They read: 


January first, 1902 Indian Ocean 
I resolve and determine to: : 
I. Systematize my time, arranging each morning the day before leav- 
ing my bedroom, and putting the program in writing. 
2. Read all letters when received and answer all that come before 
3 p.m. the day received, and all others next day. 
3. Until I return to America, to give two hours each day to concen- 
trated thought upon the business, Philadelphia and New York. 
. Not waste time on unnecessary matters. 
. Seek and strive to do each day some definitely important thing. 
. Try to be more to each member of my immediate family. 


NI OWN > 


. Make a list of all my known relatives in a book to ascertain any 
duty undone. 
8. Have a book with each work stated, that I am interested in to study, 
if I am fulfilling my duty. To read this book at least once a week. 
g. I will spend more time in private prayer. 


The next day he was at Colombo, and immediately took 
the three-day trip to Kandy. On January 5 he left 
Colombo on the City of Oxford, arriving in Calcutta six 
days later. Ten days in Calcutta were broken by a trip 
to Darjeeling for a glimpse of the Himalayas. At Cal- 
cutta he was the recipient of much attention from officials 
and missionaries. Lieutenant-Governor and Lady Wood- 
burn invited him to a ball. Lord and Lady Curzon gave 
a dinner for him at Government House, and he attended 
the “Viceroy’s Evening Party.” The Curzons urged him 
to spend several months in India, and went out of their 
way to offer him every facility for travel. Lady Curzon, 


TO INDIA AND BACK 63 
daughter of a partner in Marshall Field & Co., had been 


a débutante in Washington when he was Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, so he had doubly high standing with the Viceroy and 
his wife. | 

But John Wanamaker had gone to India with the inten- 
tion of seeing missionaries. After his return to Paris he 
described his India trip as “a beautiful visit to the missions 
and the missionaries.” And said that he was “returning 
with a heart full of sympathy with the servants of God who 
are laboring with the patience of Christ in the land of the 
heathen.” * He was glad to get his passports in order with 
the help of officials in high places, but he chose deliberately 
to shape his plans and spend his time with missionaries of 
the Presbyterian Board and Y. M. C. A. secretaries, who 
represented his two great interests in the country. 

So he left Calcutta on January 22, gave Benares just a 
peep, and spent two days at Allahabad, a center of Presby- 
terian evangelical and educational work. Dr. Ewing, 
president of the American college there, told him that he 
ought to give a week to Agra and Delhi. He compromised 
on four days, taking in Cawnpore and Lucknow on the way. 
He was in Bombay at the end of January for several days, 
then at Madras for two days, and went south, stopping at 
Presbyterian mission stations em route. He reached Ceylon 
again on February 7. 

Wanamaker was besieged with an astonishing variety of 
begging letters and invitations from missionaries, British 
civilians, Eurasians, and native Christians. They began to 
pour in at the Continental Hotel, Calcutta, on the day of 
his arrival. He was unable even to answer the telegrams, 
so numerous were they. His reputation for fabulous wealth 
had evidently preceded him. Coupled with his avowed 


* Letter to L. P. Rowland of Grand Rapids, Mich., written on March 17, 
1902. 


64, JOHN WANAMAKER 


intention of spending his time in India in an investigation 
of missionary work, this supposed command of unlimited 
resources raised wild hopes in many a breast. To more 
than one insistent claimant he had to admit frankly that if 
he followed his heart’s desire in endowing schools and 
erecting buildings he could have spent several times his 
fortune during the month in India. But he was accessible 
and genial, and in the smaller places he visited, when there 
was time, he inspected the work of all denominations and 
nations. 

Outside of the Presbyterian missions, of which he 
planned to make a report to present to the 1902 General 
Assembly, we find that he was especially interested in the 
Baptist Famine Orphanage at Agra and the Industrial — 
Home for Poor Girls run by the Irish Presentation nuns 
at Vepery. To these and to others he made gifts or sent 
presents later. He took the voluminous correspondence 
back with him to Paris and devoted several days there to 
letters of acknowledgment and thanks. 

Among the most important of these letters were those 
to Dr. Ewing of Allahabad and Dr. Ewing of Lahore, 
inclosing drafts and asking for the plans of their schools. 
He promised to confer with Mr. Speer in New York about 
sending out teachers to the Allahabad college. The letter 
to Dr. A. H. Ewing pledged a definite sum for the yearly 
salary of two new teachers, and concluded: “I will try to 
keep you in funds, but you can always count upon this sum 
coming, and go on and take care of the people and make 
them happy.” ‘The days at Allahabad were the beginning 
of an interest that never died. In addition to supporting 
teachers, he built a laboratory and hostel and two bunga- 
lows. After he had talked the situation over with Mrs. 
Wanamaker he erected the Mary Wanamaker High School 
for Girls—one of the new group of buildings of the Alla- 





IRLS’ ScHOOL, ALLAHABAD, INDIA 


~ 


ANAMAKER G 


Mary W 





TO INDIA AND BACK 65 


habad Christian College, which was furnished by Beth- 
any Sunday School and to the maintenance of which Bethany 
contributed for years. 

At Calcutta he made a substantial gift to the work of the 
Sunday School Union and presented a communion service 
and a memorial tablet to the first missionaries in India. 
There he heard John R. Mott address a great audience of 
Indian students and schoolboys. At the close of the meet- 
ing he asked Mott what he could do for India. Mott 
replied that the most important thing he could think of 
would be to provide a building for the high-school boys of 
Calcutta. A few days later, when Mott was on his way 
to Bombay to sail for America, he received a telegram from 
Wanamaker saying that he would gladly give the money for 
this building. The promise was confirmed in a letter from 
Paris on March 17, when Wanamaker wrote to the Calcutta 
secretary to authorize the local board to go forward with the 
work of the erection and furnishing of the boys’ branch 
building, “with the express condition that under no possible 
circumstances any debt be incurred.” 

When he reached the Bombay Presidency, plague was 
raging. He had, in fact, met plague everywhere in India; 
and the hopeless condition of the people stirred him deeply. 
He wrote: “Health conditions are appalling. No words 
can express the brave and self-sacrificing work of the mis- 
sionaries. But it is a drop in the bucket. In some large 
cities there are whole streets in every house of which I am 
told there is a case of the plague.” 

The next objective was Madras, in which he had a par- 
ticular reason to be interested. Five years earlier, on the 
train from Philadelphia to New York, he had met a former 


*The tablet to the memory of Adoniram Judson, “erected by one of his 
countrymen who revered his memory,” is in the Lal Bazaar Chapel. Dr. Jud- 
son worked for thirty-eight years in Burma. He was the first missionary 
of the American Baptist Missionary Union, and began his work in 1812. 


66 JOHN WANAMAKER 


general secretary of the Philadelphia Y. M. C. A., who was 
then just starting in to work at Madras. Touched by his 
story, on the back of a card he wrote a pledge for $30,000 
to give the association a building in Madras. This had been 
completed and dedicated in January, 1900, with the Gov-_ 
ernor of Madras in the chair. After two years, the benefac- 
tor was happily present at the anniversary of this occasion, 
and made an address, Lord Ampthill presiding. Behind 
Wanamaker on the platform was his own portrait, which 
had been unveiled at the time of the dedication. If he had 
wanted a practical demonstration of how usefully his money 
had been spent, seeing with his own eyes the Madras build- 
ing in operation was all that could be desired.* He found 
that he had made possible a center not only of real use- 
fulness, but also of the breaking down of caste through 
Christian teaching. In the restaurant he saw natives of 
every faith eating together, and remembered what Bishop 
Potter had told him of his impression of this unique feature 
of the Wanamaker building in Madras. The bishop had 
said: “Having learned the subtle and tremendous power 
of caste, I felt that this great spectacle at Madras was a 
prophecy of the time when all men will find one table, the 
table of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

That he returned to Ceylon, instead of sailing from Bom- 
bay, was because he had in mind going to the Malay States, 
Singapore, Java, and Siam. The Far East attracted him. 
He had always wanted to visit China and Japan. Why not 
go around the world? 

This course was urged upon him by cable, following up 
a family campaign of letters. He hesitated for a few days, 
drawn both ways, and then made up his mind to return to 
Europe. From his correspondence we find that the prog- 


"The Madras building not only supplied local needs, but was also the 
headquarters of the Y. M. C. A. movement throughout India. 


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TO INDIA AND BACK 67 


ress of real-estate transactions in New York, and the deci- 
sions that were gradually forming in his mind about new 
store buildings in Philadelphia and New York, influenced 
him to renounce a dream that was then within his grasp 
and that was never afterward realized. It was not that he 
felt that he had to go home immediately. But he was out 
of touch with his business, and in Paris or London he would 
have offices and facilities for doing the things in his mind, 
and could be home at any time within a week. 

Although he wanted to go to Cairo, he was now more the 
merchant than the tourist, and he kept on to Naples. At 
the Hotel Vesuvius he found a cablegram from Mrs. Wana- 
maker assuring him that everything was going well and 
that he could safely stay as long as he wanted. His son 
Tom sent virtually the same message. He did stay at 
Naples for a few days, and visited the volcano, and the exca- 
vations at Pompeii, Capri, Amalfi, and Sorrento. The 
daily accounts of his courier indicate that he was traveling 
alone, and that his beverages were always Apollinaris and 
black coffee. The lightest of Italian wines did not tempt 
him. 

In the first week of March he was at the Grand Hotel 
in Rome, and was among those for whom had been secured 
the precious tickets of admission to St. Peter’s on the unique 
occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of 
Pope Leo.* It was unique; for few popes have been ele- 
vated early enough to achieve a reign that brings them to 
their silver anniversary. On the morning of March 5 he 
had the additional honor of a private audience with the 
Pope, to whom he said what he afterwards repeated in an 
interview with the Philadelphia Times: 


I was appalled by the condition of the people in India. Out of three 
hundred million, but one per cent have been influenced by Christianity 


* See below, p. 447. 


68 JOHN WANAMAKER 
after one hundred years of labor. The Roman Catholic Church is doing 


the most effective work, although the Presbyterians are also bravely 
struggling. 


From Rome he went to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower, 
and to Florence. For years he had longed to revisit the 
Pitti and Uffizi palaces after he had “read up” on the early 
masters of the Italian schools. On the edge of a catalogue, 
he wrote: “I am now rewarded for having studied a bit. 
Pictures require preparation to appreciate them—like every- 
thing else.” 

From Paris he wrote to Dr. Ewing: “I am inclined to 
go to Carlsbad for the cure, inasmuch as I am not likely 
to get any summer vacation and shall be a prisoner in the 
heat of America while Mrs. Wanamaker and my sons are 
seeking their vacation.” But while the Wanamaker busi- 
ness had reached the point where it would run smoothly 
without the personal attention of its founder, it needed 
more than ever his peculiar genius to keep the front place 
and progress in the face of formidable competition. The 
time had come to make a decision about the future in 
New York and to go ahead with the erection of an entirely 
new building in Philadelphia. This could not be done 
from Carlsbad! The family thought he was going to 
Carlsbad, but he crossed to London for Holy Week. He 
attended the City Temple on Palm Sunday and Good Fri- 
day, and sailed for home the next day. 

During the week in London he visited the American 
exhibition at Crystal Palace—always a favorite excursion— 
and gave an interview to the Daily Chronicle on the death 
of Cecil Rhodes and general conditions of American busi- 
ness. We find in his personal files two letters from Ambas- 
sador Choate, who wrote: 


I was extremely sorry to miss your call at the Embassy on Saturday— 
and again not to find you at your hotel when I called yesterday. Will 


TO INDIA AND BACK 69 


you do me the honor to lunch with me here to-morrow and if any of 
your family are with you to bring them? I desire very much to see you, 
and you will all be most welcome. 


And again: 


I am so glad you are coming—our lunch is at half past one, but I shall 
be here till then and the sooner you come the better. 


Henniker Heaton, father of penny postage in the British 
Empire, gave a dinner in Wanamaker’s honor at the House 
of Commons on March 25. It was attended by several 
members of the Balfour Cabinet, and the host referred 
to his guest as “the American who has done most for the 
advance of international postal communications of any man 
of his day.” Renewed contacts with the men met on this 
occasion proved to be the most interesting and delightful 
feature of Wanamaker’s subsequent visits to London. He 
was invited to King Edward’s coronation, which was to take 
place a few months later, and promised to return for that 
event. 

When he arrived in New York on April 6, Wanamaker 
told the reporters that he had now crossed the ocean forty- 
four times and that the voyage he was concluding had 
carried him 25,000 miles in four months. “A new world 
has opened to me through my glimpse of Asia—a world 
that I only dimly guessed existed when I was in Cairo. 
Why, I hardly knew where India was before I went there, 
and I found a continent teeming with millions upon mil- 
lions, which makes Europe feel small—and our country 
small and new,” he said. On the first Sunday back in his 
old place at Bethany he declared that the India voyage was 
an adventure such as he had not experienced since he 
migrated to Indiana with his family when he was a little 
boy. “In that crowded other world, my man Dean and I 
took along our bedding—often our food—just as we had 


70 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to do crossing Ohio to Indiana half a century ago. In the 
East we did not dare to eat their food and sleep in their 
beds—and generally they would not have allowed us to. 
The people out there thought we were as unclean as we 
thought they were—the compliment was returned!” 

Wanamaker always wanted to return to the Orient. He 
was never to have another opportunity. But from that 
time on he took a deeper and more enthusiastic interest in 
John R. Mott’s conception of the “world réle” of the 
Y. M. C. A., in the international possibilities of Sunday- 
school work, and especially in the forward movement of 
foreign missions. He had been only vaguely and spas- 
modically interested before in church work abroad. Huis 
new attitude was eloquently expressed at a mass meeting of 
the Board of Foreign Missions in connection with the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. He told the 
commissioners that, although the government gives some 
money for education from Indian revenue, the “largest 
proportion of humanitarian and religious work going on 
there is traceable to the Christian religion.” He expressed 
admiration for the business-like way in which the missions 
were run and defended missionaries from the charge of 
living extravagantly. Summing up, he said: “In all my 
life I never saw such an opportunity for the investment of 
the money that we set apart to give to the Christ who gave 
Himself for us.” 


CHAPTER VI 


ART AND ARCHASOLOGY 


MAN in John Wanamaker’s position is sure to receive 

at some time or other an invitation to join every con- 
ceivable kind of organization for the promotion and enjoy- 
ment of the arts and sciences. Civic and philanthropic 
societies solicit the rich man for a sustaining membership. 
Fraternal orders want him to join. Clubs let it be known 
that he will not have to wait for favorable action to be 
taken when he is put up for membership. Many hundreds 
of such invitations were simply filed, and probably none but 
the biographer has ever gone through them. It would 
have required most of the time of a secretary just to answer 
the correspondence and pay the dues of these organizations 
(the invitations came from all over the world) had Wana- 
maker attempted to accept the memberships proffered him. 
In Philadelphia, however, and later in New York, there 
were societies and clubs which Wanamaker felt that he 
ought to join from a sense of civic duty or for business 
reasons. For instance, he took out fifty memberships for 
his store staff in the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, 
and carried them for several years, to help the Chamber 
get on its feet. He also offered a substantial contribution 
toward a building for the Chamber in 1914. He was a 
member of civic alliances and associations, nature clubs, 
conservation movements, and a host of other things. He 
was a trustee of the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia 
from its organization in 1895 for several years." He paid 


*He was one of the three trustees named in the ordinance of Common 
Council that created the Museum. He aided in gathering specimens of 


a 


72 JOHN WANAMAKER 


dues to clubs, but rarely, if ever, used them. The only 
fraternal order that interested him was the Masonic—and 
that late in life. 

But we do find from Wanamaker’s papers that he took 
a faithful and sustained interest in every organization on 
whose board he served that had to do with his church, with 
art, and with archeology. 

In the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadel- 
phia and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York his 
deep interest is evidenced by his never allowing anything 
to interfere with attending the exhibitions. It was the same 
with the Art Club of Philadelphia. From the time he first 
hung pictures in the custom-tailoring department of the 
lower Chestnut Street store until his death he regarded 
buying and displaying pictures, and encouraging art exhi- 
bitions, as an integral part of the Wanamaker business.. He 
once said that he could no more help buying pictures than 
the Paris housewife could help buying flowers when she 
went marketing. It wasan apt illustration. For, although 
the Wanamaker stores sold pictures, they were never 
regarded as merchandise, and no effort was made to dis- 
pose of them and get a quick turn-over as with other 
goods. They were not goods, bought to sell, any more 
than the Parisienne’s flowers were food, bought to eat. The 
more striking pictures from the Paris Salon, which he fea- 
tured from time to time, were not for sale at any price. 

Pictures played an important part in John Wanamaker’s 
life, and there is probably no American who did so much 
to make contemporary European art known in America. 
But he was not a collector, in the ordinary acceptance of 
that term. He! had, his;\‘old; masters?) atmlimdenhurst, 
plenty of them, and good ones, too. But he was the despair 


foreign products, and was an active adviser in arranging them for display, 
believing that the Museum would be a valuable educational influence and 
inspiration to Philadelphia business enterprises. 





WEARING GOWN IN WHICH HE RECEIVED THE DEGREE OF Docror oF LAWS FROM 
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, JUNE I7TH, IQI5 


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ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 73 


of dealers and self-styled connoisseurs who could not make 
money out of him. The correspondence in the private files 
is illuminating. The indications are clear that European 
dealers looked upon rich Americans contemptuously, reject- 
ing the idea that Americans possessed either taste or pred- 
ilection. They assumed that what the American collector 
was after was the rare picture, pronounced a masterpiece 
by experts, which was bound to increase in value. Pos- 
session of the picture would make the owner famous and 
cause him to be envied. All the American had to do was 
to be willing to put up the dollars. He could leave the 
rest safely to the dealer. 

How provoked they all were when John Wanamaker 
turned them down! They lectured and scolded him, and 
warned him that he could never become a collector without 
their aid and counsel. For a long time they refused to 
believe that there was an American who wanted to buy 
pictures because he liked them—and for no other reason. 
Wanamaker let them know in no uncertain language that 
they couldn’t tell him what he ought and ought not to like. 
In the end they stopped pestering him, realizing that here 
they had an American with ideas of his own, oblivious to 
the far from disinterested art opinions of others, and one 
who did not have to look upon the possession of pictures 
either as a good investment or as a title to fame. 

From the early 1880’s, when he first began to acquire 
pictures, Wanamaker was a thoughtful student of medizval 
and modern painting. He read a lot. His memory was 
retentive. He spent time in art galleries. But there were 
certain influences that formed his taste and that never 
greatly changed. He had to learn to recognize good draw- 
ing, of course; but he was born with a love for the colorful. 
He was attracted to canvases where the landscapes were 
gay. He wanted his skies bright, his trees honestly green, 
and the girl standing in the field beside the river not too 


74 JOHN WANAMAKER 


drably dressed. He expected a picture to tell a story; and 
he could never get up much interest in still lifes, in land- 
scapes without what he called “movement” in them, in 
tours de force, or in paintings that gave him nothing. 
Often, after pausing before a canvas strikingly executed 
and that he instinctively knew was good work, he would 
move on with the comment, “Well I suppose the artist was 
expressing something or he wouldn’t have painted it, but I 
don’t know what it is.’ He did not like nudes. His 
women had to be clothed. And he was emphatic in his 
belief that disgusting realism had no place in art or litera- 
ture." In defending against the criticism of a friend a 
Bouguereau by which he set great store, he said, “Art in 
its highest sense is the expression of ideal beauty.” 

There we have John Wanamaker in art and in literature 
—and in religion. A painting, a book, a religious exposition 
had either to tell a story that attracted or inspired or at 
least to put a glamour on life, appeal to the emotions, and 
take one out of oneself. It was a homely philosophy, per- 
haps—a philosophy at which the Philistine would sneer— 
but successful for all that throughout a long and rich life. 
Wanamaker’s attitude toward art was his interpretation of 
Shelley’s definition, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” 
A picture that does not give enjoyment cannot be beau- 
tiful. Art should depict the beautiful or teach a lesson. 
In books and paintings alike Wanamaker sought enjoyment 
or a message. If he found neither, the book or the paint- 
ing was meaningless to him. 

Wanamaker’s first important purchases were well-known 
pictures of Bouguereau and Rosa Bonheur, battle scenes of 
Détaille and de Neuville, a Watteau shepherdess, Troyon 


* He told the Bethany Bible Union, for instance, that he heartily approved 
the rejection of Biondi’s “Saturnalia” by the directors of the Metropolitan 
Museum. He cut out and saved a Brisbane editorial on this event, with the 
sentences underlined: “Art should elevate men—not make pigs of them. 
Therefore it was an excellent thing to reject Biondi’s disgusting work, and 
Di Cesnola is a goose.” 


ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 75 


cattle and Schreyer sheep, a Ziem Venetian scene, a Jules 
Breton peasant girl, and typical canvases of Millet, Corot, 
Daubigny, and Alma Tadema. To these he soon added a 
number of portraits by old masters. 

In a store editorial written on November 11, 1921, Wan- 
amaker said that he had been “walking one afternoon with 
Munkacsy in the lovely Duchy of Luxembourg years ago,” 
and that just as “Munkacsy saw nature and passing incidents 
around him with more than eyes, they will see the most 
without who have the most within.” The reference is to 
a visit to the Hungarian painter at the Chateau de Colpach 
in August, 1887." Munk4csy had learned from Sedel- 
meyer, the famous Paris dealer, that Wanamaker was at 
Homburg, and he wired him there. He naturally wanted 
to see the man who had bought his masterpiece a few months 
earlier. Munkacsy’s “Christ Before Pilate” had a sensa- 
tional success for several years in Europe before it was 
brought to America by Sedelmeyer in 1886. This huge 
canvas, which is still spoken of as “the most widely dis- 
cussed picture of recent times,” * was being exhibited all 
over the country when Wanamaker bought it. The next 


*Munkacsy died in 1900, and his widow sent his palette to John Wana- 
maker. In her letter she said: “I could not have offered to one more worthy 
than you this precious souvenir of the one whom you so much admired and 
whose grand qualities of heart and loyalty you appreciated. My affectionate 
greetings to your adorable wife and dear children.” Twenty years after 
the first visit Wanamaker returned to Colpach to pay his respects to Madame 
Munkacsy. In his diary we find a spirited entry concerning this second 
visit: “August 8, 1907. We left Ems at 11:15 in the auto and expected to 
arrive at Castle Colpach for dinner. Through misdirection we got out of 
our way 75 kilometers. Worse yet, it had grown dark, and the roads were 
narrow and rough, and still worse, we had a heavy thunderstorm. I really 
became afraid—first in being in a machine with an electric light in it and 
a store of petrol, and second, I felt we were at the mercy of rufhans and 
robbers, and without a pistol. I put one purse in one stocking and the other 
and a roll of bills in the other stocking. . . . August 9. In this old-fash- 
ioned house—bright with sun, and a copper beach nodding to me in the park 
under the window. I have just come from a simple but long talk at break- 
fast, after attending mass from 7:10 to 7:30 with Madame M. It is a 
lovely visit to have, and they pleaded with me to stay some days, but my 
cure calls me back to Ems this afternoon.” 

* Literary Digest, December 13, 1924. 


76 JOHN WANAMAKER 


year he purchased from the same Paris dealer Munkacsy’s 
“Christ on Calvary,” which had followed “Christ Before 
Pilate” over the United States. Never before or since 
have single pictures been taken around this country and 
made money. The two great canvases went back to 
Europe in 1889 to be hung in the Austro-Hungarian pavil- 
ion at the Paris Exposition, and they were exhibited four 
years later at the Chicago World’s Fair. Since then they 
have been at Lindenhurst and the Philadelphia store. 

In the 1880’s Munkacsy had a great vogue in Europe as 
well as in America, and the pictures Wanamaker bought 
were undoubtedly his most startling work. How much 
Wanamaker prized them as the art of a great master and 
how much as teaching the lesson of Christ’s humiliation 
and death, it is impossible to say. Both before and since 
they passed into Wanamaker’s hands the Munkacsy paint- 
ings have had a great influence upon all who have seen 
them, and they are probably the most widely known pictures 
in the United States. 

Another illustration of Wanamaker’s interest in a pic- 
ture with a message was his purchase of Pierre Fritel’s 
“Tes Conquérants,” which was the most-talked-of contri- 
bution to the 1892 Salon. It was acquired by John Wana- 
maker the following year. “The Conquerors” is an 
allegorical composition, representing the triumphal prog- 
ress of the military heroes of history, who ride relentlessly 
forward through an avenue lined with ghastly corpses. In 
the front row are Sesostris, Alexander, Cesar, Napoleon, 
and behind them Attila, Charlemagne, Tamerlane, and 
others, their arms and standards stretching away into the 
black night. A generation of Philadelphians has grown up 
with “The Conquerors” as a familiar lesson of the ruthless- 
ness and folly of war. It was exactly what Wanamaker 
had in mind when he bought the picture. Fritel had 


ART AND ARCHAZOLOGY a 


preached with his brush. It was always a great satisfac- 
tion to Wanamaker that the interest in the Munkacsy and 
Fritel canvases, and in others of a similar nature that fol- 
lowed, was sustained through decades. For more than a 
quarter of a century he kept collecting sermons inspired by 
them. 

In 1893 Wanamaker began to buy pictures of contempo- 
rary artists at the Paris Salon. It became a regular feature 
of his annual trip to Europe, and year after year he man- 
aged to get to Paris while the Salon was open. It would 
have been a calamity had he not done so; for through his 
numerous purchases he had become known as “le Provi- 
dence du Salon” or, more affectionately and irreverently, 
“le bonpapa des artistes francais qui en ont besoin”—an 
expression which, with a very slight change, made a deli- 
cious double entendre. 

So well received were these Salon purchases in Phila- 
delphia and New York, and so enthusiastic did Wanamaker 
become over the artists of the day, that in 1903 he said 
to his Paris representative: “We have not been buying many 
pictures these last years; maybe we were not liberal enough 
about prices. Let us go through the Salon.” Wanamaker 
was as alert and unfatigued at the end of a day as at the 
beginning. He was meticulous in his examination, and he 
would mark in the catalogue he carried what canvases he 
wanted and the prices he would pay. The Paris office man 
was frightened when he added up the list and found that 
the amount came to over a million francs. So he went to 
Wanamaker and told him this. Without hesitation came 
the answer, “You were directed to buy all you could.” 

To illustrate Wanamaker’s mind and methods in the pur- 
chase of pictures we do not have to depend upon the remi- 
niscences of his associates. In his diary for 1903 we find 
entries about the Paris Salons: 


78 JOHN WANAMAKER 


May 13, 
There are over 6,000 paintings in the Salon this year in the two 
Exhibitions, and scarcely 100 of them will live, yet among the fellows 
doing this, their first work, there may be another Millais, Daubigny or 
Turner. The crowds surge to and fro, hurrying to see the exhibition. 
So many persons interested in art is something to see and think about. 
France seems to be very proud of her record as the patron of art. I 
wonder when America will have a School of Art, subsidized by the Gov- 
ernment, drawing our young men and women about it. ‘Twice I went 
to the Salon to-day, and spent § or 6 hours there. © 
May 14, 
The day carried me about the streets and into the shops 1 wanted to 
study, and twice again to the Salon to review my judgment on pictures. 
I dined with some Americans and met two artists at 10:15 here in my 
rooms to talk for an hour on pictures. It is fascinating to be in touch 
with people who are closely studying and talking art all the time. 


May 16, 
The evening I gave to the American Art Association, who had their 
annual entertainment. ‘The American colony was out in force to cheer 
and stand by their 2,000 art students in Paris. ‘They were kind enough 
to give me the Ambassador’s box and I took a party of Americans. 


May 18, 
I went again to both Salons until 4, and then drove for nearly two 
hours in the Bois. 
May 20, 
First: The Real Estate men about a store in Paris. What do you think? 
Who can tell what this foolish man will do next? Then visits to certain 
central possible blocks. Next an engagement to go away off into old 
Paris. My visit was for the murals from the Boscoreale—4g9 of them— 
of surpassing importance. They are to be sold next month and there 
is a standing offer by the Berlin Museum for them of 1,500,000 marks! 
If I were able, I would buy them for Philadelphia. ‘Then a ride in the 
marvelous underground, 3/4 around Paris to our artist’s studio, all so 
queerly interesting to see 400 crayons of the famous drawings now pub- 
lishing of Quo Vadis;—a singularly interesting man, this Russian is, I 
bought two paintings from him because I think he is a rising man. 
Then to my office for an hour. ‘Then to a luncheon that I gave to six 
people. Afterwards to the Salon for the ninth time, and then a drive 
and at night an opera party—Romeo and Juliet. 


ART AND ARCHAOLOGY 79 


More than two hundred and fifty pictures were acquired 
from the 1903 Salon. The year before Wanamaker had 
bought the entire studio collection of the Bohemian painter, 
Brozik, some three hundred paintings, water-colors, and 
sketches." There had been a mild remonstrance at the 
time. When he started homeward in 1903 Wanamaker 
laughingly confessed to friends that he was afraid to tell 
his sons how many pictures he had bought. This explains 
the diary entry on the homeward voyage: “I’m glad the 
invoices will not get there before me. Dear me, I must 
break the Salon news gently!” We can only surmise that 
the one to whom the news had to be broken gently was 
Thomas B. Wanamaker, who would be looking upon the 
practical side of the question—where display them all? 
Wanamaker loved to boast affectionately of his older son, 
whom he called “a terrible fellow, generally so uncom- 
fortably right when he gets after me.” The other son, 
Rodman, who had lived many years in Paris and was also 
susceptible to pictures and artists, would understand more 
easily how the two hundred and fifty had happened.” 

When the new Lindenhurst was built and there were new 
store buildings in both cities, it was possible to display the 
the Wanamaker collections to great advantage. Except for 
the war years, even though John Wanamaker did not go 
to Europe during the last decade of his life, the Salon 
purchases were kept up, and the Wanamaker exhibitions 


*In 1902 Wanamaker “fell from grace,” as he himself put it, in London 
also. He sent home 118 numbers from the walls of the exhibition of the 
Institute of Painters in Water Colors. In 1903, in London, the diary records 
that after breakfast at the Bath Club with art critics, he “went to the Royal 
Gallery and saw this year’s pictures. My friends limited our looking to 
the best 20 and we skimmed the rest afterwards—then on to a private exhibi- 
tion of Sargent’s early sketches.”? But there is no mention of wholesale buying 
in London that year. 

*It is probable that the older Wanamaker recognized that the stores could 
not advantageously hang or handle all the pictures that he had bought in 
1902 and 1903. He was quite glad to take some of them to his own account. 
He purchased many pictures from the two stores in December, 1903. Several 
were sent to Bethany, and the rest were divided between his town house and 
Lindenhurst. 


80 JOHN WANAMAKER 
have given to the people of Philadelphia and New York 


a better opportunity than any public gallery or museum 
afforded of knowing what contemporary French artists are 
doing. When John Wanamaker was made an officer of 
the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1911, 
his services to contemporary French art were mentioned as 
calling forth the grateful recognition of France. 

With all his love for contemporary art, John Wanamaker 
realized that the popular education he was so eager to give 
could not be other than one-sided if only living painters 
were represented in the store canvases. Many of the pic- 
tures that he wanted were unobtainable altogether. So 
he had copies made from the originals that he liked in 
European museums and collections. Among the most note- 
worthy of these were reproductions of all the beautiful Nat- 
tier portraits and of historical pictures in the Versailles gal- 
leries. Statues that appealed to him in the Louvre were 
also copied, some of them in bronze, and spread about the 
stores. Through his son Rodman he became acquainted 
with the work of H. O. Tanner, whose choice of religious 
subjects greatly appealed to him, and of Frederic C. Frie- 
seke, who was commissioned to paint the mural decorations 
in the auditorium of the New York Wanamaker’s. 

To encourage artists at home he started students’ art 
exhibitions annually in the Philadelphia store, and gave 
advanced students the opportunity to show and sell their 
work at no cost to themselves. And then was launched 
a children’s Christmas drawing competition for first efforts, 
with no sketch by an exhibitor under fourteen left out. 
Every entry was hung! 

Merchant always, with a genius for display, Wanamaker 
was particularly interested in showing pictures in such a 
way that each one would have the maximum of appeal. 
He hated the bizarre or incongruous in the display of any- 
thing beautiful, and he disliked to see pictures crowded 


ART AND ARCHASOLOGY I 


together. That was his objection to most museums in the 
Old World and the New. The effect of the finest things 
was destroyed by crowding. The eye was bewildered, as 
in a three-ring circus. “In museums,” he once declared, 
“most everything looks like junk even when it isn’t, 
because there is no care or thought in the display. If 
women would wear their fine clothes like galleries wear 
their pictures, they’d be laughed at.” He contended that 
one did have to think long before admitting the truth of 
the paradox that what is not for sale is still for sale. 
Whatever the possession you prize, when others see it you 
want to sell it to them. You may not want to be paid 
with money and you may not want to transfer the physical 
possession of the thing to another. But you do want the 
person to whom you show it to pay for it in admiration 
and intelligent appreciation. Everything that is lovely, 
everything that is worth while, therefore, needs the use of 
the merchant instinct to show it off to best advantage. 

Developing this idea to his store people, Wanamaker said 
that the windows were a pretty good indication of what the 
store people thought of the goods they had to sell. Per- 
haps it was for training in the zsthetic sense or challenging 
the ingenuity of his decorating staff that he ordered occa- 
sionally a whole window to be given to one book or picture. 
In the last year of his life he entered with enthusiasm into 
the competition of Chestnut Street stores for the best han- 
dling of a work of art in the store window during Phila- 
delphia Art Week. With Beatrice Fenton’s bronze seaweed 
fountain, loaned by the Fairmount Park Commission, he 
won the gold medal. 

Wanamaker’s taste in pictures and his knowledge of them 
is also indicated by the Bethany programs and souvenirs of 
over half a century. They give a more striking proof 
than either his private galleries or his store collections that 
John Wanamaker traveled farther and developed more in 


80 JOHN WANAMAKER 


his artistic than in his literary taste. In pictures he got out 
of the realm of the obvious and purely sentimental appeal. 
He came to have a fund of information concerning, and a 
strong liking for, a wide variety of pictures scattered in the 
collections from Madrid to Petrograd. For program and 
menu covers and for souvenirs prepared for church and 
Sunday-school organizations at Bethany and John Cham- 
bers Memorial it is evident he took the greatest pains in 
the choice of pictures to be reproduced. The mechanical 
work had to be just right; and as he owned a printing plant 
capable of the finest reproduction, he was able to get pictures 
printed to his satisfaction. Lithographs and steel engrav- 
ings that he particularly liked he sometimes thought of 
years afterward, and it was a function of those who sur- 
rounded him to know what these were, to see that the 
plates were carefully preserved, and to be able to bring a 
plate out at a moment’s notice if he should ask, say in 1920, 
for a Murillo Holy Family that had been used for a Beth- 
any Christmas program in 1890. 

Every form of art interested Wanamaker. He was as 
enthusiastic about the binding of books, jewelry, embroid- 
eries, porcelains, stone and iron work, and antique furni- 
ture as he was about paintings. One of the great joys 
of general storekeeping was that he could deal in all these 
things, could feel that he was influencing the taste of the 
people, and could bring pressure to bear upon manufac- 
turers to cultivate their imagination and artistic sense. 

Sometimes, with other things as well as with pictures, 
he felt that he must live with them before making up his 
mind. It was this way with the things that he bought 
from the German building at the St. Louis Exposition in 
1904. here he purchased the furnishings of a gentle- 
man’s study and anteroom; many pieces of bronze and furni- 
ture, antique and new, that were in vogue at the time; two 
copper fountain groups; Darmstadt living and dining rooms; 


ART AND ARCHASOLOGY 83 


a Magdeburg gentleman’s study; a Karlsruhe music festival 
hall; and ecclesiastical and profane art works from Cologne. 
Some of these were quickly discarded; others were made 
into rooms in his private offices in Philadelphia and he wished 
he hadn’t;* and a few of the purchases stood the test of time 
and became permanent additions to the store and to 
Lindenhurst. 

Wanamaker’s interest in archeology and paleontology 
was intense, and embraced research work in Europe and 
America. He co-operated with Provost William Pepper 
of the University of Pennsylvania to found the archzologi- 
cal museum, and presented its first collections of Indian 
antiquities and Italian bronzes. He was elected a manager 
of the University Museum in 1895, and became vice-presi- 
dent in 1905, a position which he held until his death. In 
1901 he bought for the museum an important collection 
illustrating the ethnology of the Southwest aborigines, and 
the same year he made possible the acquisition by the 
Museum of the Indian antiquities collected by Thomas 
Blaine Donaldson in Idaho and Indiana. In 1900 he had 
financed an expedition to the Indian tribes of the far West, 
under the auspices of the Museum, and presented every- 
thing that Dr. Stewart Culin brought back. In 1902, when 
he was in Naples, he ordered from the Chiurazzi foundry, 
at the same time as Andrew Carnegie, a set of reproduc- 
tions of all the bronzes found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. 
This collection of nearly 400 pieces he allowed Chiurazzi 
to exhibit at the St. Louis Exposition in the Royal Italian 
Pavilion, and then gave it to the University Museum. The 
only other collections of the kind—at that time—were the 


* The diary in August, 1911, says: “I write this in the new Dining Room 
of the new offices that are not so artistic as they might be, although they have 
endeavored to follow the pattern that had been set. ... The two rooms 
after the corner room, along Juniper Street, are St. Louis rooms, and they 
(to me) do not seem to fit together. They are convenient, though—light and 
airy.” 


84. JOHN WANAMAKER 


originals in the National Museum of Naples and a dupli- 
cate set in the Field Museum, Chicago. 

Wanamaker was a faithful attendant at the meetings of 
the Board of Directors of the University Museum, and 
he was an invaluable counselor in arranging and putting 
through the ambitious building program of twenty-five 
years. We find in his diary, written in the lecture-room 
of the Museum on December 15, 1911, when he was wait- 
ing for a quorum of the Board: 


How much improved this Museum is. It is not as large as the British 
Museum, but it is not any smaller than that Museum once was. 


In 1916 he financed an expedition, under the auspices of 
the University of Pennsylvania Museum, to Alaska, for 
the purpose of studying the manners and customs of the 
natives and of procuring specimens of their work, history, 
and handicraft. To the finds of this expedition he added 
several other collections that had been previously made, 
and he was intensely interested in the contents of the cases 
when they arrived. He made suggestions as to their dis- 
play, and on three occasions, when the curators spoke of 
objects that were lacking, he asked if they were procurable 
anywhere, and authorized the Museum to get them. 

In Italy, Wanamaker’s interest in archeology was based 
upon his personal contacts. He had financed Indian and 
Alaskan expeditions because of his life-long interest in 
American aborigines, and his faithful service on the Board 
of the University Museum was not uninfluenced by the per- 
sonal element. Provost Pepper had been a warm friend, and 
there was hardly a man whom John Wanamaker admired 
more and liked more to be with than Provost Charles 
Custis Harrison. In Italy, on the other hand, his arch- 
zeological interest had been awakened and was sustained by 
visits to the places where digging was going on. In 1895 
Professor Frothingham’s work at Orvieto was being subsi- 
dized by Wanamaker, and the next year he got Provost 


ART AND ARCHAOLOGY 85 


Pepper and Mrs. Sarah Y. Stevenson, of the American 
Exploration Society, interested in what Frothingham was 
doing. 

The private files show that Wanamaker’s enthusiasm for 
digging in Italy led him, when he was traveling there, to 
make promises of subsidies sometimes impulsively—and 
not always wisely! It was hard for him to resist the man 
who would take him by the arm and lead him to a spot, 
and say, “Right here where we are standing I am sure that 
there is Ww wihen; the tragicvains ss Buty of;icourse.\ 1 
have no money—and it would cost so little!” Wanamaker 
had the money and his curiosity was aroused. Although it 
was his habit to be cautious in the amounts he promised 
(he never gave carte blanche) it was not the money part 
of it that bothered him when he got into an undertaking 
of this kind. He was willing to pay. But when it dragged 
on—as excavations always do—or nothing came of the pro- 
posals to which he had agreed, his interest would not down. 
Wanamaker was like that—put him on a trail and he wanted 
to follow it right to the end. 

An instance of this was the attempt to excavate the sup- 
posed site of the oratory of Priscilla and Aquila. When 
Wanamaker and Lowrie were in Rome in the spring of 
1903 they were on the Aventine with James Gordon Gray, 
pastor of an English church in Rome. In the Church of 
St. Prisca the parson guide pointed out from the veranda 
to the south of the church the proposed site of the first 
Roman oratory. “I am sure that it was there,” he said, 
dramatically, “that was held the earliest prayer meeting in 
Rome.” 

“Do you mean to say that the house of Priscilla and 
Aquila is under that garden?” exclaimed Wanamaker. 

“Yes, sir, ] mean it,” answered Dr. Gray. 

“Uncover it,” said Wanamaker, enthusiastically. “Dll 
provide the funds.” 





86 JOHN WANAMAKER 


The love of digging and the thought that he was going 
to contribute something new to the historical knowledge of 
the early Church combined to prompt Wanamaker to give 
Dr. Gray a check on the spot. There followed years of 
effort and negotiations and correspondence. Excavations 
were made in the garden of the monastery almost immedi- 
ately. But no trace of a first-century house was found. 
The next year Dr. Gray learned that a scholar working in 
the Bibliothéque Nationale had turned up information in an 
old manuscript indicating that the oratory might be under 
the substructure of the church itself. He wrote about this 
to Wanamaker, who was then in Paris, suggesting some 
one be sent to the library to check up on this new light. 
It was promptly done, and Wanamaker ordered application 
to be made to the Ministry at Rome for permission to sink 
a shaft in front of the church. This was granted, and it 
was not long before the workmen reached brick arches that 
might have dated from the first century. Then suddenly 
the permission was withdrawn, the reason being given that 
the church might be damaged. 

For years Dr. Gray sought to be allowed to start the 
work again, and he kept Wanamaker informed. Just 
before the war broke out, Professor Lanciani, in a lecture 
at the University of Rome, spoke of the possibility of find- 
ing the oratory and alluded to John Wanamaker’s gener- 
osity and enthusiasm. The original funds in Dr. Gray’s 
hands had not all been spent. In 1914 he wrote to ask 
what he should do. Wanamaker’s response was to continue 
the effort to find the oratory. 

The uncertainty and inexhaustibility of archeological 
research work appealed strongly to a man of Wanamaker’s 
temperament. There was always something ahead! And 
in art, if the work of contemporaries attracted him more 
than that of old masters, was it not because he was dealing 
with a living creative force, always changing? 


CHAPTER VII 


ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES 


ORE than any other characteristic, it was Wana- 

maker’s alert receptiveness to new ideas that made 
his fortune and that enabled him to become an undisputed 
pioneer in so many lines in the industrial and mercantile 
development of the United States. At a conference of 
postal clerks in Washington, when he was Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, he said: 

“T don’t think that any one man knows it all; each of 
us may learn, from the highest official down to the lowest. 
We are very foolish people if we shut our ears and eyes 
to what other people are doing. I often pick up things 
from strangers, and from reading. What others are doing 
suggests to me the solution of many a problem that has been 
puzzling me, the existence of many a new mercantile oppor- 
tunity I was unaware of.” 

We have seen how true this statement was of the boy who 
sold clothes on Market Street, of the young proprietor of 
Oak Hall, and of the enterprising merchant who found 
himself—somewhat to his dismay at first—with a mam- 
moth store, too large for just masculine needs, on his hands 
in 1876. He read about Edison after his eye had caught 
the electrical exhibits at the Franklin Institute in 1874 and 
the Centennial Exhibition. So he went to Menlo Park. 
Electricity solved his problems of lighting, ventilation, and 
transportation to upper floors. Had they remained unsolved 
the development of the great general store would have been 
impossible. 

87 


88 JOHN WANAMAKER 


One of the amusing stories of the infancy of the tele- 
phone industry has to do with Wanamaker’s interest in 
Bell’s invention. Bell’s men were having a hard time to 
get people to pay attention to what was regarded as a toy. 
But Wanamaker, seeing its possibilities, agreed to have a 
demonstration at his house. The proprietor of the Grand 
Depot had just moved into a substantial residence, 1336 
Walnut Street, and Mrs. Wanamaker had seen that the 
furnishings did justice to the house. The group invited to 
the Bell telephone demonstration came to what was really 
a house-warming. The apparatus, consisting of two instru- 
ments, wires and batteries, was connected up from a room 
on the third floor to the parlor, the wires being laid on 
the stairs and through doorways. In order to prove that 
no fraud was being perpetrated, all doors were closed upon 
the wire. The demonstrator’s assistant, in his anxiety and 
hurry, tripped on the wire and upset the battery, spilling 
acid on Mrs. Wanamaker’s parlor carpet. The hopes of 
enthusiastic Wanamaker support were sunk in a gaping hole 
that grew before the dismayed eyes of the Bell men. The 
luckless youth who didn’t think of the wire afterward 
became a high official in the Bell Telephone Company. 
His awkwardness may have postponed, but it did not pre- 
vent, Wanamaker’s early adoption of the telephone, and 
his later use of it far beyond any merchant of his day.’ 

When the portable gasoline engine was first being tried 
in a timid way in horseless carriages by experimenters in 


* The Bell Telephone Company of Philadelphia was organized in 1879, 
and in the directory for February—the first one issued—the Wanamaker 
store was one of the 269 subscribers. Telephone News for June 8, 1906, 
says that Wanamaker’s was the first store to install a private exchange, and 
that in the new Philadelphia building, the private exchange called for 3,000 
stations, 2,000,000 local messages a year, and 120 trunk lines to the central 
office. The switchboard, run by twelve operators, connected up nearly 
19,000 miles of wire within the store. It was “the largest store system in 
the world—larger than the three next largest combined in Philadelphia; 
larger than the largest two combined in New York City.” 


ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES — 89 


France, it is not surprising that Wanamaker spent days 
in Paris investigating the practicability and the merits of 
the different types of light gasoline engines that were being 
evolved. He was one of the first automobile owners in 
America. But, unlike other rich men, he saw in his car 
unlimited possibilities. His engineers had already been 
experimenting with electric vehicles and “steamers.” Wan- 
amaker put them on the gasoline engine. In that period 
of rapid evolution in the United States as well as in France, 
Germany, and England, it required time and thought for 
any man to keep up with the new developments in trans- 
portation. Wanamaker gave both. 

The strongest appeal of mechanical transportation to the 
merchant who used hundreds of wagons for delivery and 
hauling was the doing away with cruelty to animals. He 
had long found it impossible to make his drivers always 
treat their horses right. Not easily excited by complaints, 
he was quick to anger when anyone wrote in that a Wana- 
maker driver had been abusing his horses. Whips were 
forbidden on Wanamaker wagons, but there were other 
ways of being merciless to the horses, pulling too heavy 
loads up grades, standing without blankets on cold days, 
being driven lame. Such incidents were bound to happen. 
They were generally brought to his attention. It was dif- 
ficult sometimes to trace them and get the truth of the 
matter. What a blessed relief if horseless wagons and 
trucks could be developed! * 

Another consideration that Wanamaker had in mind long 


* This thought is mentioned several times in memoranda and in letters 
of the period when Wanamaker was first considering mechanical transporta- 
tion. Cruelty to animals he abhorred. Several of his store editorials of a 
later period emphasize the fact that the man who was cruel to animals would 
also be inconsiderate in his treatment of his fellow-men. He gave this reason 
for disapproving of animal acts in circuses and vaudeville. In one editorial 
he declared: “To ill-treat animals or human beings to extort greater service 
is shameful.” 


90 JOHN WANAMAKER 


before the change from horses to motor-drawn vehicles 
was expediting deliveries and shortening the inevitably long 
hours of employees in this branch of the organization. As 
cities grew and people lived farther away and in the sub- 
urbs, the problem of getting purchases from the center of 
town to the homes of the people was becoming serious. 
And all the time the expense of delivery was increasing. 
Wanamaker thought these things through. He believed 
that it was good business and of public interest for a mer- 
chant in his position to be experimenting with the new ideas. 
In the delivery field, as in all other phases of merchandis- 
ing, Wanamaker was determined to keep ahead of the pro- 
cession. He tried electric wagons, and was as prompt to 
discard them (except for light work in town) as he had been 
to take them up. Experiments under his personal direc- 
tion indicated that gasoline-driven engines were undoubt- 
edly the best and most economical for vans and trucks, and 
gave them a far wider radius. Later he came to the same 
decision for the smaller delivery wagons. This is why he 
was the pioneer both in Philadelphia and New York in 
the use of gasoline-driven vans and trucks, and one of the 
first to substitute gasoline for electricity in his other wagons.’ 
From the first, Wanamaker was an enthusiastic motorist. 
He liked the sensation of going fast, of covering a lot of 
ground, and the only kind of back-seat driving he did was 
to call for more speed. When traffic signals first began to 
operate, he was greatly annoyed; he never did more than 
resign himself to the policeman’s hand. “Like a horse, 


* Wanamaker’s was by far the largest general store in Philadelphia during 
this period of change. In New York, according to Morris D. Hall in the 
Scientific American, October 26, 1912, Macy’s was pressing Wanamaker 
pretty closely in facilities for delivery, but the figures indicated Wana- 
maker’s faith in the gasoline-driven engine. They are: Macy stables, 150 
wagons and 200 horses; Wanamaker stables, 150 wagons and 275 horses; 
Macy garage, 7 gasoline and 35 electric vehicles; Wanamaker garage, 
70 gasoline and 5 electric vehicles. 


ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES _ gr 


champing at the bit, he always was, if I may say so, sir,” 
his chauffeur told the biographer. But he was a good sport 
in accepting the inconveniences of pneumatic tires and the 
uncertainties that used to attend dependence upon an engine 
more than now. His experience with other innovations and 
his unbounded faith in the ingenuity and perseverance of 
American engineers, made him say of automobiles, as he 
had said of electric lights and telephones and elevators: 
“They'll get better all the time. Let us laugh now; if we 
wait, we shall forget that these things ever happened, or, if 
they do, wonder why it was.” 

Just as he thought of mechanical transportation as an aid 
to the work of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, of which he was an ardent member, so he saw in 
motoring the channel for “the irresistible spread” of the 
better roads movement which bicycling and his own rural 
free delivery had done so much to foster. This opinion 
is expressed with uncanny prescience and precision in a letter 
written in 1897. 

It is small wonder, then, that Wanamaker foresaw and 
believed in the possibilities of automobiles for everybody 
at a time when it seemed to be the universal opinion that 
their prohibitive price would keep them in the luxury class. 
In his long merchandising experience Wanamaker had heard 
that kind of talk before about other commodities, notably 
bicycles. ‘There had been a time—only ten years earlier— 
when bicycling was the sport of the well-to-do. Wana- 
maker had refused to accept this “fact.” He had patent 
laws examined by his lawyers, figured out the royalties that 
would have to be paid in making up a bicycle, and contracted 
with a manufacturer to put a bicycle on the market, at the 
merchant’s risk, at less than half the price that was being 
asked for standard makes. Everybody began to ride. 

Why could not the same be done with automobiles? 


92 JOHN WANAMAKER 


This question was in Wanamaker’s mind when he read that 
a Detroit mechanic, Henry Ford, who had attracted atten- 
tion by racing cars of his own construction, was forming a 
company to manufacture automobiles within the reach of 
everybody. His title to do this was based upon his simple 
engine. During the first year less than a thousand Ford 
cars were sold—virtually none of them in the East—but 
the company, which had heretofore received attention only 
because of the racing excellence of its car, now came before 
the public as defendant in a patent suit. George B. Selden, 
a New York lawyer, obtained a patent for a gasoline engine 
in the early days of experimenting, which he later con- 
tended covered all vehicles propelled by internal-combus- 
tion engines. He never manufactured motor-cars himself, 
but when the automobile industry was launched, he held up 
manufacturers for license fees." As he did not demand all 
that the trafic would bear and there was a large margin of 
profit in the early luxury cars, the manufacturers paid trib- 
ute to Selden to avoid litigation. Ford could not carry out 
his idea if he had to pay royalties to Selden. He asserted 
that his engine differed in principle from the engine pro- 
tected by the Selden patent. With the encouragement of 
the licensed manufacturers, who wanted to prevent the com- 
petition of a cheap car of demonstrated excellence (Ford 
had been the sensation at the Madison Square show in the 
autumn of 1903), Selden entered suit. He won a prelimi- 


“In a statement made at Dearborn on October 6, 1925, when the first Ford 
airplane was starting out for Mineola, Henry Ford said: “The aviation 
industry is bigger in possibilities than anything else in the world—too big 
to be a one-man patent concern, too big to be any one man’s contribution to 
the science. Patents are silly things when they are used to hinder any 
industry. No man has a right to profit from a patent only. That produces 
parasites, men who are willing to lay back on their oars and do nothing. 
If any reward is due the man whose brain has produced something new and 


good he should get it through profits from the manufacture and sale of that 
thing.” 


ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES 93 


nary decision in the lower court, which required Ford to 
put up a bond. 

The American League of Automobile Manufacturers, 
commonly called the A. L. A. M., saw the opportunity to 
run the Ford car out of the market by frightening pros- 
pective purchasers. A nation-wide campaign was under- 
taken in every center where the Ford car was making its 
appearance to warn buyers against damage suits. They 
were told that the law would hold them responsible indi- 
vidually for infringement of the Selden patent, and it was 
announced that dealers would be made codefendants with 
the Ford Motor Company. The first agency had just been 
started in New York by Charles Duerr on 38th Street. 
We shall let Mr. Duerr tell the story of what happened 
in the summer of 1904 shortly after he had closed the con- 
tract for the agency: 

“T received a wire from Mr. Couzens [now Mayor of 
Detroit], requesting me to come to the factory, offering 
to pay all the expenses. On my arrival there Mr. Ford 
took me out into the shop. We sat on boxes and talked 
things over pleasantly while, of course, he whittled a stick. 
As a matter of fact the company had no money to defend 
the Selden patent suit. John Wanamaker, however, in con- 
sideration of being given the agency for New York and 
Philadelphia, had offered to undertake the defense of the 
suit in New York. You must understand that the A. L. 
A. M. had brought the suit against me as agent so that the 
trial should take place in a New York court. The Ford 
Company, of course, was also made a party to the suit.” * 


* The biographer submitted the statement of Mr. Duerr to Senator Couzens, 
who wrote from Washington on June 13, 1924: “It is true that we secured 
the relinquishing of the agency to Mr. Duerr by paying him a stipulated 
sum. ‘Then we gave the agency for Ford cars to John Wanamaker, in both 
New York and Philadelphia. The reason for this, however, was not because 
the Ford Motor Company had no money to defend the Selden patent suit, 
because we were vigorously defending it. The Ford Motor Company recog- 


94. JOHN WANAMAKER 


Ford was anxious to have the agency in Wanamaker’s 
hands before the autumn automobile show in New York. 
So Couzens was authorized to purchase from Duerr a 
release from the contract, and the Ford agency in New York 
was transferred to John Wanamaker. At that time there 
were only about twelve hundred Ford cars—perhaps less— 
in use. New York knew the car only as a racing machine, 
and Ford asa racer. The name had not appeared in adver- 
tising; newspaper files bear witness to the fact that slight 
attention had been paid outside automobile circles, which 
were then restricted in numbers and influence, to the Selden- 
Ford litigation; and the great mass of people did not know 
that there was an automobile to be had at a figure within 
the reach of all. It remained for John Wanamaker to 
introduce Henry Ford in characteristic advertisements, 
which have become as historic as they were at the time 
prophetic. 

We reproduce two of these without apology for their 
length. For they mark the beginning of what has proved 
to be an epoch of miraculous transformation in transporta- 
tion conditions throughout the world. 

The first advertisement, illustrated with caricatures of 
“the Bogey Man” and “the scarecrow,” was: 
nized what John Wanamaker’s name meant in merchandising, and that his 
public advertisement to guarantee purchasers was much better than the 
Ford Motor Company’s advertisement to guarantee purchasers. I want to 
point out that Mr. Wanamaker did nothing but a strictly business act, took 
no risk, and gave no aid that cost him anything. I do not want to have 
the Ford Motor Company placed in the position that they got something for 
nothing.” 

The published figures of the assets of the Ford Motor Company in August, 
1904, do not indicate, however, the disposition of a sum sufficient to defend 
an action against a dealer in New York, or to do counter-advertising against 
the A. L. A. M.’s announcements and threats. It was not until 1909 that the 
Ford Motor Company’s earnings enabled it to take all risks and costs of 
litigation from the shoulders of agents. We feel that the historian of the 
future will not fail to record and appraise justly the intervention of John 


Wanamaker in 1904, which seems to have been overlooked by biographers of 
Henry Ford up to the present time. 


ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES — 95 


When you buy a Ford motor car from John Wanamaker you are guar- 
anteed against any trouble with the Trust. That’s all the insurance any 
man will want. 

Remember that John Wanamaker will take care of all his customers 
in any litigation growing out of the infringement suits over the Ford 
car, without a cent of cost to any of them. 

Don’t give $600 to the Bogey Man. 

The Ford Motor Car, with tonneau, is a double cylinder machine, 
seating four people, and its price is $900. 

The cheapest two-seated tonneau sold by the Trust is $1,500. 

Henry Ford has proven that he has the highest mechanical ability in 
the construction of automobiles by building the speediest racer, and he 
has indicated an extraordinary gift in distancing competitors on the 
pacentrack, 

Henry Ford has distanced his competitors in his commercial production 
even more than in racing, And it hurts. 

The Ford Motor Car cannot be beaten by the ‘Trust in competition; 
so they have erected a scarecrow to frighten the buying public. 

The smart crow knows that there is always corn where the scarecrow 
is; and the man who wants to get his money’s worth when buying an 
automobile can depend on it that all these suits against the Ford Motor 
Car Co. are brought only because the Trust realizes that it can’t compete 
with Henry Ford and his splendid $800 and $900 cars. 

We believe that the Selden Patent is worthless. The Trust had three 
suits in court against the Ford Motor Car Co. before it started the suits 
against John Wanamaker. One suit would be plenty, if Selden and his 
licensees were seeking to uphold their rights. But when persecution is 
the object, and when the public is to be frightened from buying the 
best cars made at the price, then the more noise they can make, the 
bigger they think their Bogey Man will look. 

This statement is made at this time to relieve any apprehension that 
might be created in the minds of those who have purchased or shall 
purchase Ford machines through us. 

Don’t pay $600 too much to the Bogey Man. 


The second advertisement, which followed several days 
later, when New York was wondering who Ford was and 
what it was all about, answered questions that had been 
raised: 


96 JOHN WANAMAKER 
Henry Ford made the “‘scoop” of 1904 in building a popular-priced 


motor car with a double opposed cylinder motor. 

Other manufacturers realized their mistake after it was too late to 
change their machinery. ‘They might build a car to compete with the 
Ford if they had prepared for it; but it would cost something like a 
hundred thousand dollars to change their plants in order to do it; and 
that’s out of the question. 

Thus Henry Ford’s shrewdness makes the Ford Motor Car stand above 
all others at a popular price—that is, for the man who has eight or nine 
hundred dollars to invest in a car. 

The Trust realizes that its single-cylinder cars can’t compete with the 
Ford double cylinder car, so it brings out the tom-toms, and starts a 
war dance around any man who has the temerity to sell the Ford cars 
to the public. 

Of course, the Trust doesn’t expect the noise of the tom-toms and 
its straw-stuffed scarecrows to frighten John Wanamaker. If the Selden 
patent were of any value the Trust could shut up every factory outside 
of the Trust in short order. It isn’t necessary to congest the courts with 
a lot of petty cases when a man can establish the validity of his patent 
rights. 

The Trust is not taking any notice of the fifty or so other unlicensed 
automobile manufacturers who are using the Selden patent. ‘They can 
be met with competitive cars. But the Ford can’t be so met. So out 
come the tom-toms and scarecrows to frighten you. 

These suits don’t frighten the unlicensed manufacturers; and they 
don’t frighten John Wanamaker. We know the threats to be harmless. 
But they are hoping that you don’t know that; and they want to scare 
you into buying a Trust car that isn’t half as good as the Ford. 

It’s all right to say ‘“‘Boo!” to the goose; but that’s a poor argument 
to use to frighten a grown-up man who wants to get the best automobile 
for his money. 

Remember that John Wanamaker will take care of all his customers 
in any litigation growing out of infringement suits without a cent of 
cost to any of them. 

Get a Ford Motor Car and enjoy it. We’ll attend to the tom-toms. 


Motorists of the early days, who followed the shows of 
twenty years ago, will remember the unique Wanamaker 
advertising, with the pert cartoons. And if they can get 


ADVENTURES WITH AUTOMOBILES 97 


themselves back to their knowledge and attitude of those 
days, they will remember that they asked themselves, 
“What is this Ford car, anyway?” They had not heard 
of it before, but because John Wanamaker was handling it 
they felt that it must have some solid merit. The com- 
monplaces of to-day were the novelties of yesterday. Up 
to the end of 1904, including the cars sold by Wanamaker 
in New York and Philadelphia, exactly 1,708 Ford auto- 
mobiles had been sold. In 1905 and 1906 the annual out- 
put was about the same. It was not until the summer of 
1906 that ten cars a day—regarded as a great feat—was 
reached. 

John Wanamaker is on record at the time as saying that 
he had little interest in any automobile as a merchandising 
proposition, and that he had taken on the Ford agency only 
because he felt that someone had to stand behind the move- 
ment to make automobiles a commodity and not a luxury. 
He had faith in Ford and admiration for his achievement 
when few, if any, realized that it was an achievement.’ 
Dealing in automobiles was not the function of a general 
storekeeper, whose merchandising field should be limited, 
in Wanamaker’s opinion, “to articles that can conveniently 
and gracefully be taken in and out of the store.” There 
was endless annoyance, too, about applying the Wanamaker 
rules of guaranty and exchange to an article of merchandise 
still confessedly in the experimental stage. When he felt 


*It is interesting to note that Rodman Wanamaker is his father’s son in 
his faith in Ford. On October 8, 1925, the New York Wanamaker adver- 
tisement stated that the J. W.—1, the first “Ford of the air”? to be offered 
commercially, would arrive that afternoon from Ford Airport, Dearborn, 
Mich., and that it would be “the first Stout all-metal airplane made by the 
Ford Motor Company to be placed on sale in the first airplane department 
in a store.’ In 1909, John Wanamaker had cabled an order to Blériot the 
day of his successful Channel flight, and six weeks later was able to put 
on sale the first airplane ever offered commercially. In 1914 Rodman Wana- 
maker built the first airplane for transatlantic flight, which he called the 
America, The outbreak of war made impossible the attempt to cross the 
Atlantic, and the giant airplane was used by the British air service. 


98 JOHN WANAMAKER 


that the cheaper car had come to stay and that the Selden 
contention, though not settled, could no longer keep auto- 
mobiles a luxury, the Ford agency was given up. Ten 
years were to pass before Ford was to invite Wanamaker 
into “another adventure,” as he called his Peace Ship. But 
of that later. 

In gathering the testimony of those who helped Wana- 
maker in his early adventures with automobiles, we come 
across an interesting fact to which we find no reference in 
Wanamaker’s speeches and letters. The diary of the year 
in which it occurred unfortunately seems to be missing. 
Wanamaker’s own experience in running out of gas or need- 
ing repairs led him to believe that public service should be 
available for motorists. He told the men who were experi- 
menting with engines for him that New York ought to have 
some place not only where cars could be left for the night, 
but where there would be a supply of gasoline and tires 
and a mechanic on hand for repairs. He put this idea into 
practice in a building on 58th Street, near Third Avenue, 
which we have been assured was the first public garage in 
New York, if not in the United States. 


CHAPTER VIII 
EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 


OMMENTING upon the inclusion of Wanamaker in 
Harrison’s Cabinet, an unfriendly critic declared that 
the Philadelphia merchant was a mediocre man who had had 
a succession of good breaks. ‘Everybody knows that luck and 
location make the successful merchant,” he said. But Wan- 
amaker thought—and taught—that the men who succeeded 
in life, in whatever career, were those who used the talents 
that God gave them and who kept everlastingly at it. As 
a young man, on week days in business, he tried to exem- 
plify what he said on Sundays at Bethany. He was fond 
of repeating Daniel Webster’s answer to the one who asked 
him what was the most important thought that ever entered 
his mind. “Individual responsibility’—that was the key- 
note of life! So Wanamaker was able to write: 


To every man there comes a day when he must separate himself from 
others and act for himself alone. Cities and nations must be saved by 
individuals. Compound your common sense, conscience, and strength, 
and make them count. 


We have seen how New York was a challenge to him. 
He bought a defunct business in a district from which retail- 
ing was moving, and at a most unsettled period. He resus- 
citated the A. T. Stewart business, in the face of keen 
competition, just before Christmas in a presidential year, 
when everybody was in a panic over the free-silver move- 
ment and when the country had not yet emerged from four 
years of a low-tariff régime. He went merrily into com- 
petition with other great New York stores at a Christmas 

99 


100 JOHN WANAMAKER 


season. He announced simply the “undeviating mission of 
this House to be just itself.”* In transferring to New York 
Wanamaker merchandise, “the best of the world’s prod- 
ucts,” and in “keeping them ready for the people to examine 
at their leisure, any one the same as another,” he was test- 
ing in new ground the old policy of the Philadelphia store. 
He expressed it this way: 


The task of life we have set before us is not to make money the goal, 
but to serve interesting people in a business way, from a point of view 
different from the ordinary, that has in it the evolving principles and 
the observance of ethics of a professional character. 


From the beginning there was no doubt of the success 
of the New York venture. A herculean effort was made 
and maintained by Robert C. Ogden and his associates to 
open and carry on a store to which New Yorkers would 
flock, despite its location and the absence of bargain sales 
and claptrap advertising. The response of New York was 
astounding. But it could not have been begun and it cer- 
tainly would not have continued had not the master mind 
thrown himself unreservedly into the New York venture, 
dreaming and daring, as was his wont, and having a very 
good time doing it. In less than three years Wanamaker’s 
had become a New York institution, and everybody was 
ready and willing to give the man whose name the business 
now bore credit for having accomplished the impossible.” 


* Twenty years later he voiced the same thought in a store editorial: 
“The Store is just its plain self expressed in merchandise and deeds.” 

*In 1899 Crerand’s Cloak Journal said: “The truth is that when Wana- 
maker came to New York City every merchant in town considered that the . 
Philadelphian had bought ‘a pig in the poke,’ and all underestimated his 
ability to draw trade to the distant purlieus of Broadway and Ninth Street. 
It was admitted that Wanamaker had a beautiful store—but what was the 
use of a store without customers? But headway and standing were gained 
month by month until, with the fall and holiday seasons of 1899, business 
was as large as that of any dry-goods or department store in the city. When 
the store was open during the evenings, it was a strange sight to see the side- 
walks between Ninth and Fourteenth Streets, usually so deserted, swarming 
with shoppers, all making their way to Wanamaker’s.” 


EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS tor 


It had not seemed impossible to Wanamaker. That one 
could not do business in exactly the same way or with 
exactly the same stocks in the two cities, he knew before 
he started. He was no stranger to New York. We remem- 
ber that he went over from Philadelphia to buy goods at 
Stewart’s the day after he started in business for himself. 
For more than a decade he had done most of his own buy- 
ing, and after that he visited New York frequently and 
studied the evolution of retail merchandising problems from 
the New York as well as from the Philadelphia point of 
view. He knew what he was about when he finally bought 
the Stewart business. He believed that if he regenerated 
it and operated it on the Wanamaker principles, with the 
benefit of thirty-five years of experience in storekeeping, 
his New York venture could not fail. 

There were those who thought that no Philadelphian 
could do retail business in New York. There were others 
who said that it was folly to begin the experiment at an 
“out-of-the-way place like Ninth and Broadway.” Rumor 
soon had it that the Wanamaker Store in New York was 
“on the rocks.”” But Wanamaker’s correspondence and pri- 
vate papers from 1896 to 1899 reveal that he was a 
supremely happy man. The New York venture was meat 
and drink to him. As he himself put it, he “loved” to 
meet the problems of sudden increase in liabilities, in execu- 
tive staff, in sales force, and in buying at home and abroad. 
Each stupendous task, each uncharted path, each seemingly 
insurmountable difficulty, was fun. During those three 
years he lived a hectic existence, amazing everybody by 
his energy and dexterity in the political campaigns in 
Pennsylvania, by his ubiquity in the two stores, and by his 
willingness to assume new responsibilities in connection with 
Bethany. Each activity, taken by itself, seemed to onlook- 
ers to be a heavy burden and a strain to be feared upon 


102 JOHN WANAMAKER 


the man who was passing into his sixties. But each seemed 
to refresh him for the others—and none more so than New 
York, where he was literally, as he wrote, “on my toes all 
the time.” 

When he left for Europe in 1899 for a cruise to the Land 
of the Midnight Sun he was able to laugh at the Cassandras 
who had been predicting failure, and he did not take the 
trouble to deny the wild rumors of Wanamaker expansion 
to other cities. Trade journals and newspapers alike per- 
sisted in asserting that the striking success of the New York 
venture would soon make ‘“Wanamaker’s” a national insti- 
tution. After New York would come Chicago, Boston, 
Cleveland. Why not? As one newspaper editorial said: 


That John Wanamaker is ambitious none will deny; and the ambition 
of his life, to be the greatest merchant in the world, can now be quickly 
satisfied. Success grows with a magic ratio. With the greatest stores in 
Philadelphia and New York bearing his name, Mr. Wanamaker might 
stride through the Union, planting thriving establishments in ten or 
twelve or twenty centers of population, and taking the public by storm! 
The picture is not overdrawn. In fact, it is well within the confines of 
probability. Why should not an institution like Wanamaker’s expand? 
The tendency in retail merchandising in the more populous localities is 
toward centralization. 


But Wanamaker was not a promoter, and he had “no 
interest,” as he said, “in growing mushrooms.” His cri- 
terion of success was not what a man could do, but what 
a man could do well. Extending the sphere of his mer- 
chandising activities to New York had been possible solely 
because New York was only two hours from Philadelphia. 
His instinct warned him not to expand his business beyond 
the radius of his continuous and uninterrupted personal 
supervision.. It was really no temptation that he had to 


"He never forgot his early experiences with branch clothing stores, where 
delegated authority, without frequent contact with the parent Oak Hall, 
proved unsatisfactory. See above, vol. i, p. 128. 


EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 103 


resist when he was called upon to consider merchandising 
possibilities in other American cities. 

The Philadelphia location was ideal. His problem there 
was to put upon the site he already owned a building that 
would enable him to remain indefinitely the greatest mer- 
chant in that city. In New York, on the other hand, he 
had to decide whether he was to stay where Stewart had 
founded the business or to move uptown as other general 
stores were doing. The old Stewart building, excellent as 
it was, soon proved too small for a general store in New 
York. He had to have more room, or fall behind his 
growing competitors. The alternatives facing him were to 
buy up the adjoining block and erect a great building there, 
or to move his business. 

The private files reveal the man’s open-mindedness. It 
was neither stubbornness nor pride nor the desire to prove 
that New York would come to Wanamaker that made him 
stay where he was. He weighed the pros and cons, bring- 
ing all his talents to bear upon the problem, and while he 
was getting control of the block to the south of the Stewart 
building, he did not fail to provide for the contingency of 
moving, in case that should eventually prove necessary. He 
gave careful consideration to a number of other possible 
sites. Through brokers, he bought properties on Thirty- 
sixth and Thirty-seventh Streets, between Fifth and Sixth 
Avenues, and sought options on others. He considered the 
purchase of the Metropolitan Opera House and of the Tab- 
ernacle at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street. He was 
fully informed of the successive steps that were being taken 
to assemble land for a Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal and 


* Before he had been doing business in New York a year, Wanamaker 
began to consider the possibility of adding to the Stewart building. Speaking 
to the graduating class of Perkiomen Seminary on June 26, 1902, he said: 
“T have been for five years trying to find out how to put more stories on the 
building in New York, but I cannot do it.” 


104 JOHN WANAMAKER 


for the Hotel Pennsylvania. As soon as he was sure of the 
location of the new station that was to serve both the Penn- 
sylvania and the Long Island Railroads, he had his agents 
estimate the cost of buying up the west side of Seventh 
Avenue from Thirtieth to Thirty-first and from Thirty- 
third to Thirty-fourth. On the other side of Seventh Ave- 
nue he had under consideration the block through to Broad- 
way from Thirty-sixth to Thirty-seventh, including the 
Hotel Marlborough. He had options on a Sixth Avenue 
frontage from Forty-third to Forty-fourth, on Madison 
Square Garden and on large parcels on Forty-second Street, 
including one of the Fifth Avenue corners. He considered 
the Perry Belmont property at the northwest corner of Fifth 
Avenue and Forty-seventh Street; and when a proposition 
was put before him to purchase Fifth Avenue frontage 
just below St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he inquired whether the 
whole block could be assembled; and covered sheets with 
figures." 

In the meantime he was buying up all the leases in the 
block between Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Eighth and 
Ninth Streets; and when he had most of these in his pos- 
session he entered into negotiations with the trustees of the 
Sailors’ Snug Harbor for a long lease of the whole block 
and an extension of his leasehold of the Stewart building. 
The Germania Theatre and Nos. 42, 46, 48, and 50 Fourth 
Avenue he had purchased outright. The leases for the rest 


*It is probable that no one man knew of all these transactions, knowledge 
of which the biographer has culled from correspondence and from conversa- 
tions with brokers. Some, of course, were merely proposals, and the realtors 
may not have been in a position to make good their offers. In his negotia- 
tions with the trustees of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Wanamaker had to 
confront them with tangible evidence of his intention to move if they 
did not prove reasonable. John N. Golding, who assembled the block south 
of the Stewart Building, was the broker for some of these tentative alternate 
locations. But as we find Wanamaker’s dealings in New York real estate 
continuing after the decision to remain at Broadway and Ninth Street was 
made, it is evident that he was considering New York real estate for personal 
investment, as he had long and successfully done in Philadelphia. 


EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 105 


of the block were of varying length. The Broadway Trust 
Company, occupying the ground floor and basement at the 
corner of Eighth Street and Broadway, refused to surrender 
its lease, except at a figure that Wanamaker regarded as 
exorbitant. To protect himself in the future he also pur- 
chased the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Tenth 
Street, and got control of properties near by which could 
be used for warehouses and stables. 

All this took three years of constant effort and vigilance. 
The transaction was not without its humorous side, for 
Wanamaker had to become for a time the owner of prem- 
ises upon which liquor was sold, which distressed him 
ereatly. And there were vexatious setbacks which more 
than once threatened to wreck the whole operation. 

The Sailors’? Snug Harbor tried to drive a hard bargain. 
They pointed out that the location was becoming more 
desirable because of the new subways on Fourth Avenue 
and Broadway, and the New Jersey tube station at Christo- 
pher and Ninth Streets. But Wanamaker countered that 
if he stayed where he was and put up a new building his 
decision would largely be influenced by not having to make 
too great an investment in leases. He told the trustees 
of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor that “as the experience of five 
years in the uncertainty of the neighborhood has resulted 
in a diminution and not an increase of the retail stores, it is 
at least doubtful whether if these negotiations fail retail 
business can ever be revived in this locality.” The Sailors’ 
Snug Harbor had to choose between renewing the leaseholds 
at a reasonable figure and risking the removal of Wana- 
maker’s and a consequent serious loss of revenue from their 
large holdings in the neighborhood. They knew that Wan- 
amaker had been negotiating for other sites, and it was 
decidedly to their interest to save the neighborhood for 
retailing. 


106 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Wanamaker took up the negotiations with vigor when he 
returned from India, and let it be understood that a decision 
had to be reached soon. Just before Christmas, in 1902, 
the realty deal was announced, although the lease was not 
finally signed until April 20, 1903. It was a surprise for 
New York to learn that Wanamaker was going to stick it out 
below Fourteenth Street, supposedly now the deadline for 
retailing, and that a huge building, erected on the newly 
acquired block, would give Wanamaker’s more floor space 
than any general store in New York. It was regarded as 
“a sporting decision,” to quote the editorial comment of 
one of the New York newspapers. Very few there were 
who believed that Wanamaker would be able to remain 
a competitor with the stores that were moving uptown. 
“The old man is spunky,” declared one who considered 
himself an authority on retailing in New York, “but he can- 
not buck the trend of the times. It’s a pity he is investing 
so much money down there, because he will find it so much 
the harder to pull out later when he has to move.” 

John Wanamaker, however, was not “bucking the trend 
of the times,” as he had figured it out. No greater mis- 
take can be made than to assume that Wanamaker was not 
prevoyant. The lesser investment, and consequent lower 
annual overhead, than the same space in an uptown location 
would have entailed, was undoubtedly a factor in the deci- 
sion. But it was by no means the principal factor. Wana- 
maker was always a student of conditions. Decisions that 
sometimes seemed to be made quickly and sweepingly were 
pretty generally the result of having thought the problem 
out in all its phases. Wanamaker once said that “the best 
way to avoid worrying about things is to use your head in 
mapping out your course—then you won’t have to worry 
afterward.” 

There is no evidence that he ever regretted the decision 


EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 107 


to expand the Stewart business on the site where he had 
acquired it. He had faith in New York’s future and in 
his own merchandising methods. The problem of the years 
ahead, as he saw it, was not going to be to find customers, 
but rather additional space for the demands of.the business 
that would increase steadily in volume every year." We 
have gleaned from Wanamaker’s correspondence, notes, 
speeches, and conversations with others, the grounds upon 
which he reached a decision unique in the annals of New 
York retail merchandising. To illustrate his uncanny fore- 
sight, as well as for the historical record, these considera- 
tions are worth mentioning. They have to do with what 
must always be the merchant’s chief thought, the accessi- 
bility of his store to customers and conveniences offered 
them for doing their shopping. 

Manhattan Island, narrow and water-bound, with little 
space for dwellings and with only a few main arteries cut 
by too frequent cross streets, seemed certain to become con- 
gested within the next generation, both as to inhabitants and 
to their means of getting around. People who did not like 
commuting would inevitably reclaim lower Fifth Avenue 
and the streets and squares below Fourteenth Street upon 
which wholesale business had not yet seriously encroached, 
erecting there large apartment houses, and keeping within 
walking distance of Wanamaker’s a residential population, 
with large buying power, to whom his would be the most 
accessible general store. The overflow from Manhattan 
would continue to settle in Long Island, New Jersey, and 
Westchester. The Hudson tubes, the subways, and the 


*Wanamaker’s assumption of a steadily increasing business in New York 
proved to be well founded, not only for his lifetime, but since. The growth 
has been uninterrupted. On December 17, 1925, the advertisement of the 
New York store announced that the thirtieth Christmas season was the largest 
in the Store’s history. See the telegram to the Looking Forward Club of 
the New York store, May 1, 1908, quoted on pp. 133-4 below. 


108 JOHN WANAMAKER 


additional bridges over the East River afforded rapid transit 
to Manhattan. There was a Hudson tube station on Ninth 
Street, not far from Wanamaker’s. The Fourth Avenue 
and the Broadway subways would pass on either side of his 
buildings, and discharge passengers in the basement of his 
new store. With rapid transit thus conveniently assured, 
and believing that Brooklyn, to which Wanamaker’s would 
be the nearest Manhattan general store, was bound to 
become the largest center of population in New York, John 
Wanamaker did not see how he would go wrong by staying 
right where he was. 

Looking forward to the congestion that was bound to 
come in the streets of New York, especially with the 
inevitable multiplication of motor transportation, it seemed 
to him a great advantage to have a whole block of Ninth 
Street flanked by his buildings, and to have them accessible 
for two blocks on Broadway and a block on Tenth and 
Fighth Streets. In addition, they faced the wide Astor 
Place, with its subway and elevated stations, for two blocks 
on the east.” “Downtown,” therefore, was a term that held 
no terror for Wanamaker the merchant. He lived for 
twenty years after the great decision was made, and what 
happened in New York during those two decades gave him 
no cause to feel that he had been wrong.’ 


* Because of its unusual location, the Wanamaker store is the only general 
store in New York that is able to offer “parking space for everybody.” The 
advertisement runs: “The eight facings of the two buildings on five streets 
give car accommodations unequaled in New York for shopping comfort. 
200 cars can be accommodated at one time within 100 feet of Wanamaker’s,” 

* At the beginning of December, 1913, he wrote in the tea room of the 
New York store: “I have never yet seen such a crowd! The first floor looks 
like a football game, though I am only guessing, for I have never seen one 
except in a picture. Evidently the people of New York do not like to 
confess publicly that they are slow about anything, not even about preparing 
ahead for Christmas, I hear a choir singing out into the Rotunda from 
the third floor. The lads and lassies make good sounds. I do not like the 
eccentricity of it exactly, but thousands of mad shoppers stop a minute to 
listen and get the ruffles smoothed out of their temper.” 


EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 109 


Before Wanamaker died greater New York had doubled 
in population. Underground trolleys replaced the old cable 
cars on Broadway in 1900, and the first subway brought 
New Yorkers to his stores in 1904. Between 1903 and 
1914 the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Queensboro 
Bridges opened up new thoroughfares to Long Island, one 
of them a few blocks from Wanamaker’s. In 1910 the 
Hudson tubes subway was opened. 

In another chapter we have shown Wanamaker, the 
builder, wrestling for nine years with the erection of the 
great store in Philadelphia. The new building in New 
York was planned and begun at the same time as the Phila- 
delphia store, and the same great Chicago architect was 
employed. But the problem in New York was much 
easier. With the exception of the corner of Broadway 
and Eighth Street, where an existing lease could not be 
terminated, it was possible to raze the whole block and 
erect in a much shorter time a fourteen-story building which 
embodied ideas that Wanamaker had long had in mind. 
But in gallery form, with a well in the center, it was 
designed primarily for the display of furnishings for the 
home. Tunnels connected the basements of the two build- 
ings, and a “bridge of progress” the upper floors. There 
was direct access in the basement to the Fourth Avenue 
Subway that had been completed recently. On the ground 
floor were men’s specialty shops of the Burlington Arcade. 
The upper floors were devoted to furniture, draperies, floor 
coverings, china and glass, housefurnishings, musical instru- 
ments, with workrooms on the upper stories. The new 
building contained four special features—“The House Pala- 
tial,” a private home built into the store, with its own 
halls and staircases, twenty-two rooms and a summer gar- 
den; a three story auditorium, seating thirteen hundred, with 


IIO JOHN WANAMAKER 


organ, stage, and galleries; * a restaurant with accommoda- 
tion for thousands; and a great dry air storage plant for 
furs. 

The new store was dedicated on September 24, 1907. 
Distinguished speakers had been invited, and features that 
had long been customary in celebrations in the Philadelphia 
store were planned to mark the opening. It is interesting 
to quote from Wanamaker’s diary: 


The New York ceremonies are very full of anxiety to me, and I have 
the banquet to preside over and speak at, besides a few words of welcome 
at the beginning. I am nervous as to how the New Yorkers will take 
our Philadelphia-isms. 


This entry referred to the dinner to business and news- 
paper men, at which Secretary of the Treasury George B. 
Cortelyou was the guest of honor, and after which there 
was a celebration in the auditorium, and an inspection of 
the building.” A week later the new store was opened, 
and was visited by seventy thousand people on the first day. 
A newspaper account stated that “a band of more than one 
hundred pieces crashed into the martial strains of ‘Amer- 
ica’,”” while “six balconies up the people were massed, 
crowding and eager, and all singing.” Much that was per- 


“The fact that he allowed so much space for auditoriums in the plans 
for the new building in Philadelphia as well as in New York proves that 
concert and spectacles were not simply a device for drawing people to the 
store. The Philadelphia store was in the very heart of the retail business 
section of the city, and the same artists who appeared in New York under 
Wanamaker auspices appeared also in Philadelphia. ‘The advertising value 
and drawing power of concerts and spectacles of various kinds were undoubt- 
edly considerations in the mind of the merchant, but the thought that was 
uppermost was adding these entertainments to the service offered to the public. 
Many times the concerts were given in the evenings when nothing could be 
bought. Before the large auditoriums were opened music was already a great 
feature in the life of the stores. In 1906 Richard Strauss conducted his 
own famous music, and many other artists of the first order have since made 
their American début in the Wanamaker stores. 

* See the Golden Book of the Wanamaker Stores, vol. i, pp. 289-298. 








SPECIALTY SHop—Bur.incton Arcapr, New York Store 1910, SHOWING THE SoOcIAL STATIONERY AND Book SECTIONS 





EXPANDING THE STEWART BUSINESS 111 


haps not too extravagant was said and written." The out- 
standing fact is that the new store tripled the selling space 
of Wanamaker’s in New York, which now reached thirty- 
two acres.” 

The completion of the new building not only enabled 
Wanamaker to keep pace with other general stores that had 
moved into new localities and had sweepingly increased their 
facilities, but it gave him “elbow room,” as he put it, for 
employing to advantage the talents and for developing still 
further the ideas that had put him, in one decade, in the 
first place among New York merchants.2 The volume of 
business had become too large for him to continue, within 
the confines of the Stewart building, to maintain the dis- 
tinctiveness of the departments of his business. As we 
have seen, Wanamaker’s conception of a general store was 
that of separate shops grouped under one management. 
That was his forte as a merchant. He had successfully 
resisted the tendency to make his establishment a great 
clearing house for an indiscriminate assortment of merchan- 
dise. Variety and quantity of goods never appealed to him, 
and he could not get up much enthusiasm over bargain lots 
To his dying day his ambition as a merchant was to lead in 
quality and styles. This necessitated departments run as 
specialty shops. The new building in New York gave him 
the opportunity to separate his lines and display them to 

*Comment on the new building was nation-wide and extended to Europe. 
We take from the cuttings the comment of the Russian weekly, Neva, of 
St. Petersburg: “The Wanamaker establishment excels the Parisian stores in its 
grandeur, its fifteen stories, and its remarkable arrangement. ‘Au Bon 
Marché’ and ‘Louvre’ are praised by E. Zola in his novel, du Bonheur 
des Dames, but for singing the praises of the Wanamaker store there is no 
worthy living poet.” 

In 1924 the demand for more space led to the elimination of the well 
in the center of the new building; and in 1925, when the lease at Eighth 
and Broadway expired, that corner was included in the new building, thus 
completing the solid block, and adding nearly six acres more. 


* Hartley Davis in Everybodys, September, 1907, wrote that “the John 
Wanamaker store led in volume of business in New York in 1906.” 


112 JOHN WANAMAKER 


advantage. The old Stewart building could now be used 
for women’s wear and dry-goods. On the ground floor of 
the new building he put his men’s shops. And he had 
ample space now for making every department of home 
furnishings a store in itself. Books and musical instru- 
ments, too, had their own place. 

The private files bear eloquent witness to the able services 
rendered by Wanamaker’s helpers, many of whom survive 
him and are still in the business. Both in Philadelphia and 
New York they prefer to remain anonymous. But in record- 
ing the expansion of the business in New York, the biographer 
feels that he ought to mention the work of William L. Nevin, 
friend of Thomas B. Wanamaker and his father. Mr. Nevin 
advised John Wanamaker in every step of the negotiations 
for acquiring the leases from tenants and from the Sailors’ 
Snug Harbor. He attended to the legal side of the incor- 
poration of the business, and he is still at this writing secretary 
and treasurer of the corporation under the son as he was 
under the father. 

Wanamaker gloried in the fact that in New York, as in 
Philadelphia, the new buildings made possible expansion of 
the business without the loss of the personality of the founder 
that had always permeated it. The storm of a financial 
crisis was gathering and broke. But when he entered what 
was to prove the great struggle of his life he was conscious 
of having more to fight for than ever before. 


CHAPTER IX 


RIDING THE STORM 


MONG those who knew Wanamaker or who only knew 
of him through what he said and wrote and what 
others said and wrote about him, there were many dectrac- 
tors. They either refused to believe that Wanamaker prac- 
ticed what he preached, or they tried to explain away his 
precept and example by saying, “Of course it’s easy for a 
man in his position to talk that way and do those things.” 
They forgot that Wanamaker started with nothing and 
made his way unaided to the front rank of Americans of 
his day; they were naive enough to think that success and 
honors and great wealth relieved him from bearing burdens, 
solving problems, facing crises. 

An old friend told Wanamaker in his youth: “Don’t lose 
your grip. Noah was nearly 600 years old before he 
learned how to build the ark.” Never did Wanamaker 
lose his grip, but when he saw other men unnerved he 
passed on to them this advice. In his store editorials he 
expressed in homely fashion his conviction that if the motive 
of a man’s life was serving others, self-confidence and self- 
reliance would never be lacking. He said, too, that if the 
sense of individual responsibility was strong enough, every 
man had it in him to weather any crisis. But the self-made 
man had to remember that “unless the Lord build the 
house, they labor in vain that build it.” 

When Wanamaker was establishing his business in New 
York and was in the midst of his fight against machine 
politics in Pennsylvania, he was passing from the fifties into 

113 


114 JOHN WANAMAKER 


the sixties. A decade later, in the heyday of success, when 
he was coming to his seventies, he was called upon to ride 
the greatest storm of his life. It broke at a singularly 
unfortunate moment. Everything was against him. _ IIl- 
ness had suddenly deprived him of the services of his son 
Thomas, who had been his right hand for years, and of 
Robert C. Ogden, the associate of a quarter of a century, 
who had been representing him in New York with con- 
summate skill and energy since the Stewart business had 
been taken over. The financial panic that almost ruined 
the work of a lifetime came just after the new building in 
New York was opened and when he was pushing to comple- 
tion the new building in Philadelphia. And he had greatly 
extended his obligations to buy stocks worthy of the new 
business home in New York. 

In the early part of 1907 veteran traveling salesmen 
said that they had never had such a bonanza; everybody 
bought liberally. Surface conditions indicated that the 
good times would continue indefinitely. The report of the 
United States Treasury for 1906 revealed the largest 
amount of gold ever held, up to that time, by any govern- 
ment or institution in the world. But shortly after the 
beginning of the year the effect of the heavy liquidation of 
investments by fire-insurance companies to meet the claims 
of the San Francisco earthquake began to be felt. There 
had been unwise copper speculation. The Landis decision 
against the Standard Oil Company, the Hughes investiga- 
tion of life-insurance scandals, and traction legislation in 
New York (it caused local street-railway stocks to shrink 
to one-fifth of their market value in a few weeks) strained 
the resources of the banks, which found themselves unable 
to supply the normal credit needs of the average business 
man. 

The panic of the autumn of 1907 was the most disastrous 


RIDING THE STORM II5 


that the United States had experienced since 1873. There 
were many victims; but the man who everyone thought was 
bound to go under, because of the host of seemingly unse- 
cured obligations standing against him, did not. suc- 
cumb. Day after day the failure of John Wanamaker 
was rumored. Some of those who were closest to him 
thought that he could not possibly survive; and Job’s com- 
forters hovered in the offing. Thirty years had passed 
since the 1877 crisis in Wanamaker’s fortunes. Was it pos- 
sible to believe that he could prove as indomitable a pilot 
at seventy as he had been at forty? 

We are able to tell the story largely in Wanamaker’s 
own words. He preserved the correspondence of these days 
in a special file, and put among his personal papers the 
daily sales reports of the two stores. He got relief from 
the tension by recording the happenings of each day. The 
lacunz have been supplied by men who were close to him 
and upon whose memory the incidents of the greatest strug- 
gle of Wanamaker’s life were indelibly impressed. 

In Wanamaker’s business there were storm signs many 
months ahead. He had boldly determined to finance the 
new buildings in both cities out of earnings and on his per- 
sonal credit, and the commitments were greater than he 
had figured. He began to see that adverse business con- 
ditions were going to affect the rosy prospects for the year. 
As early as February 25, 1907, he wrote: 


Very slowly indeed the wheels go round; at least it seems so to me 
when I am so impatient to go on. The nervousness in business is worse 
now than ever. A change has come. Much work has stopped, and 
people are not earning or making money. Everybody is halting, or, if 
moving, going at half speed. 


At the end of the next month Ogden retired. He was 
seventy-one and physicians had told him that to continue in 


116 JOHN WANAMAKER 


active business would be to risk his life. Rodman Wana- 
maker succeeded him in the management of the New York 
store. The stores were incorporated, as New York and 
Pennsylvania corporations, in June, 1907, with all the capi- 
tal stock in the hands of John Wanamaker.* None of the 
stock was put on the market. Wanamaker stuck to the idea 
of a personally owned business. In the early summer of 
1907 he not only owed large sums in connection with the 
new buildings, but he had had to increase very materially 
his stocks in the New York store for the opening of the new 
building.” His commercial paper had been widely circu- 
lated. At the same time he had extensive real-estate 
investments in Philadelphia. Under normal conditions 
there would have been little or no cause for anxiety. The 
Wanamaker business had been growing by leaps and bounds, 
and the class of customers carried on the books made prompt 
payments. The assets were far ahead of the liabilities; and 


* Wanamaker explained the incorporation of the business in a letter to a 
friend on October 5, 1907, as follows: “Solely for the purpose of preventing 
any dissolution or lack of continuity of my business in case of death have 
I incorporated. I personally own and have all the shares in my possession 
except a small number in the names of officers. . . . The titles to real estate 
and leasehold in New York are held by the A. T. Stewart Realty Co., which 
leases the property to the corporation for a term of years, to provide against 
complications that might otherwise arise in settlement of my personal estate 
in event of death. I own and have in my possession all the shares of the 
A. T. Stewart Realty Co., save the few to qualify directors.” 

*In April, Thomas B. Wanamaker wrote from Philadelphia calling atten- 
tion to the increase in stocks by nearly a million dollars since the previous 
year. John Wanamaker answered that he deplored the increases of stocks in 
both stores “in the present financial conditions, when we need to keep close 
to the shore; but it is impossible to forward our business with a fourteen- 
story building in addition to the old store and the enlargement of every 
department in each building without an increase of stock.” He declared 
that it was “notably wrong to expect to do business” without the best of 
stocks; and called attention to the basement, “which requires practically a 
new stock of a lower grade of good goods—I refuse to build up a business 
with near rubbish. I think any expectation to forge ahead with these two 
great buildings without plenty of merchandise would be disastrous and disap- 
pointing.” The son, his mind on financing, reiterated the warning. But the 
father, merchant always, was determined to offer New York “unrivaled 
stocks” for the autumn and Christmas season. 


RIDING THE STORM 117 


without an abnormal money stringency, it would have been 
easy to raise large sums quickly upon realty. 

On September 18 John Wanamaker returned from 
Europe, just a week before the opening of the new 
building in New York. He was in high spirits, bubbling 
over with energy and enthusiasm, and eager in anticipation 
of the great things that were bound to follow the tripling 
of selling space in New York and the easier merchandising 
conditions in Philadelphia following the opening of a new 
section of the store there. He recorded: 


Many changes have been made in the New York store’s location of 
stocks, some of which were projected before I left. We are finally ready 
for the opportunities that will follow our opening. Business has been 
good, and everybody around here is cheerful, though financial people are 
blue, and prophesy that everything is going to the dogs. But we will 
wait and see if the dogs get so mad that they cannot be frightened off. 
We are full of our work. We have fire and fine plans. With lots of 
ideas, we see our way ahead with new programs, are wild for better mer- 
chandise, and are working hard on the stocks. 


The next day, in Philadelphia, he added: 


I hardly know where the day went. I spent much time in going over 
questions regarding the finishing of the last section of the building. It 
is a tremendous undertaking in these times. The congestion in the money 
centers seems to be greater than ever, owing to the investigation of 
metropolitan trolleys in N. Y., in which Dolan, Widener, Elkins, and 
Whitney seem to be so mixed up. The distrust created locks up money 
completely. Well, the end is somewhere near, and we can only furl the 
topsails and wait. 


A few days later storm signals were noticed: 


Each day has rifts in the clouds for me, but the outlook for our 
accustomed large sales is rather dubious with such a general fright and 
hoarding of money. I fear the spenders will spend less than usual and 
that the higher-cost goods will be much neglected. There are many 
new complications such as the banks refusing to take on deposit cheques 
(that are good) on out-of-town places, saying that they have no way to 


118 JOHN WANAMAKER 


get settlements from other banks. ‘[herefore they receive them only 
“for collection,” and this does not permit drawing against them until 
the banks get the return in a week or so. This terrifies and cripples 
New Yorkers. . . . There goes the bugle. Now the buyers will come 
with the sales for an almost sunless day. All signs through the house 


were good. ‘The week has been a long one and I am glad for the Sunday 
that cuts the strain. 


Two days later he wrote: 


The tightness of money is concerning me and the long stringency 
makes us lose on discounts and gives chance for criticism of which there 
is not a little. I have retired about 2 millions of dollars in paper and 
with the 13 millions paid on our buildings I am poor enough. Still 
I see daylight ahead, but it makes my days longer and my cares greater. 


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RIDING THE STORM 119 


' Despite the inability to meet payments in time to take 
advantage of discounts and the slow settlement of August 
and September charge accounts, Wanamaker remained opti- 
mistic. For him there were always “rifts in the clouds” 
and he always saw “daylight ahead.” But in Philadelphia 
on October 21 he recorded that “the failure of the great 
N. Y. new and popular Trust Co.” had “brought a heavy 
storm of nervousness and fear, which will be a world-wide 
wet blanket.” And on October 23, while seated at lunch 
in the restaurant on the ninth floor of the new building in 
New York, he put down: 


Our business in both stores is going ahead of last year’s sales, but I do 
not see how we can expect people to buy as much under existing condi- 
tions. Looking out of these high windows, there is a haze over the city 
and the distant hills beyond the river, but it is not nearly so bad as the 
haze over the financial affairs of the city. As I drove up here, I saw a 
long line of depositors on the sidewalk making their way to the doors 
of the Trust Company of America, still continuing the run. Three or 
four other banks did not open their doors this morning. 

There is a scare everywhere. People are drawing out their balances 
just from fear that banks will close and shut them off from the use of 
their money. This precipitates trouble, for the banks have not sufficient 
currency to stand the runs. The Lincoln Trust is having trouble to-day, 
and no one knows where the fire may suddenly break out. 


On October 24. Wanamaker wrote that he saw “the way 
ahead pretty plainly” and that he would be “altogether 
cheerful” were it not for the fact that: 


T. B. W. is so far from well that it distresses me to see him. He has 
just come back from Mt. Clemens, but he is very miserable. R. W. 
is a stalwart of the first rank and drives right ahead in spite of no holiday. 
He is bright and full of inspirations. We two are the whole team—and 
we do a lot of pulling for a two-horse team. 


On the evening of October 26 Wanamaker attended a 
dinner to Postmaster-General Meyer in Philadelphia, and 
made a great speech on postal matters. Most of the men 


120 JOHN WANAMAKER 


present had heard that he was about to crash, and many of 
them believed it. They marveled at his cheerfulness and 
buoyancy, and wondered if there had been a mistake in 
their information. Although he knew what they were 
thinking and that they considered him an inevitable victim 
of the panic, if it was not quickly checked, Wanamaker did 
not hesitate to broach the subject of the financial crisis. 
He declared that the postal-savings scheme he had long 
advocated might have prevented what the country was suf- 
fering. But the diary entries prove that he was not acting 
a réle. He was not unduly worried, except for the health 
of his son Thomas, and he did not for one instant entertain 
the thought of failure. This is shown by what he wrote on 
October 28: 


It certainly does take more nerve force to live in these times that 
may never come in the life of those who live in the next one hundred 
years. But, “as thy days so shall thy strength be,” and I go on in strong 
faith, always coming nearer to the full daylight if it be only step by step. 


eae bas toe. 


Gato 


RIDING THE STORM 121 


And ina letter to a friend on the same day he said: 


Possibly you hear more of the yarns going around about our business 
than I, and it must be a satisfaction to you to find that not one of all the 
fabrications thus far has turned out true—NOT ONE! ‘That we are 
not taking all the discounts that we have been accustomed to take, not 
paying everything in the shortest time, is true, but this is unfortunately 
rather too common in the present financial conditions. I have done 
nothing since I came home but pay out money and am as poor as Job’s 
turkey. If I could not see my way ahead I would be forlorn indeed, 

There is a conspiracy of misrepresentation that we could charge as 
libelous were we to undertake to punish the offenders, but what’s the 
use? Everything is now better, just from the standing over it that I have 
done. I can see my way out well enough, but I must never again run the 
risks of this past year of sickness and absences and semi-panic in the 
financial world that is so stringent to-day that the banks could get 
12 pr. ct. for money in any amount if they had it to put out. 

This means, all things considered, that I cannot go on and finish 
the last big section of the new Phila. building and risk monetary condi- 
tions. Neither am I willing to disturb the merchandise end of the busi- 
ness to build the store. Yet the truth is that we can never settle down 
to do our best work until we have finished building the block. If I 
defer the work, I may not live to see it all done. I am moved to swallow 
my pride and take a mortgage always in reach and go ahead. 


On October 29, however, the situation had grown much 
more critical, Wanamaker realized that he was believed to 
be insolvent in New York. Directly and indirectly pressure 
was put upon him. He was fair-minded in recognizing that 
many who sought payment from him did it because they 
were as hard pressed as he was, and not because they had 
lost faith in him. But there were others who said frankly 
that they wanted their money before the crash came. On 
the other hand, friends rose up around him. MHe never 
forgot the messages of these friends. A representative of 
the New York Herald came with a cable from Paris. James 
Gordon Bennett had directed him to tell John Wanamaker 
that “he did not believe the rumors and wanted the Herald 


122 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to do anything we liked.” Bankers remembered that Wan- 
amaker had never asked for a discount in twenty years; 
“they are going the limit to help me,” he wrote. A large 
personal loan was offered by one banker, concerning which 
Wanamaker commented: “I know he cannot afford to do 
this.” Among the letters of October 29 we quote one as 
an example of the insults to which the veteran merchant was 
subjected. A real estate firm wrote: 


We take the liberty of inquiring if there is any possibility of your 
old building on Broadway coming in the market in the near future, as 
we have a client who wishes to lease about 300,000 sq. feet gross, and 
for which he is willing to pay $120,000. 


On October 30 Wanamaker recorded: 


Many people think the world is coming to an end so far as money 
and business are concerned. ‘The financial flurries are now serious. A 
kind of crazy wave seems to be sweeping up and down New York like 
an angry sea, and oozes out in drops and drips and streams over the 
whole country. I never believed that it was possible for Americans to 
have such fever-and-ague business attacks! There have been no runs on 
banks and trust companies in Philadelphia, but everybody is shivering with 
fear as if it were the coldest day in January and they had on linen or 
alpaca suits. ‘he alarmed people are everywhere drawing in their money 
and hoarding it and stopping off their store buying. In New York the 
runs are still continuing on banks and trust companies, despite the fact 
that they have steadily paid depositors every day and the greater fact 
that Mr. Morgan and others are in the breach, helping the institutions 
they are interested in. . . . Our two big boats are sailing smoothly and 
I am comfortable, but not so far along as expected. 


On November 1 Wanamaker published in the store 
advertisement, over his signature: 


Our October sales in Philadelphia, ending last night, showed a hand- 
some increase over the October of 1906. In New York we had an 
increase in sales this October that doubled the increase in Philadelphia. 
A caller said to the writer yesterday, “Be sure your ads will find you 


RIDING THE STORM 123 


We are satisfied to be judged by our advertisements and by our 


out.” 


merchandise. 


On November 2 the diary tells of more failures among 
banks and manufacturers, and gives details of pressure for 
collection and of people clamoring for an interview with 


him. But he adds: 


The streets look like a greasy black blanket and naturally everything 
is slowing up. Still the shade as well as the light must have a place in 
the picture. I am well and strong and cheerful, and this is good and 
helpful. There are brighter days, I know, folded up in the future. 


On November 6 he wrote: 


As yet none can tell what is going to happen, with banks and trust 
companies still in peril after two weeks’ runs. ‘To-day the great Arnold 
Print Works of North Adams, Mass., failed, and this old concern of all 
rich people was pushed to the wall in New England just because they 
could not borrow even on good securities. I feel so sorry for them and 
wish I could help them. I am blessed in being able to plow ahead 
toward the safe land in sight in this very rough weather. 


The next day, November 7, did not turn out to be 
another Black Friday, as had been predicted. We find 
Wanamaker in New York, waiting for the day’s sales, and 
writing: 


Friday this is, dull and gray again and rain betimes, all unfavorable 
for people to be out. But the man who whistles on a rainy day is in 
his element when things are difficult enough to wake him up. It seems 
queer for me to talk like this when the times are near to the super- 
natural and when for wecks great men’s hearts have been quaking with 
fear and many men’s fortunes have turned out to be gilded nothingness. 
The truth is that there is but one, the Holy One Himself, who can 
still this storm and calm the tumultuous waters. I am learning to pray 
and am looking to the Father above for light and help, not altogether 
for the business, but to give me health and wisdom and to make me able 


to cope with circumstances as they arise. 


124 JOHN WANAMAKER 





During the next fortnight the panic was at its height. 
The apprehension reigning in New York and New England 
spread to Philadelphia. In both stores sales fell off. It 
was the same with other general stores. Because of the 
great outlay for additional stocks in New York, the enor- 
mous obligations on the new buildings in both cities, and, 
above all, the fact that Wanamaker’s was a_personlly 
owned business, his name had to bear the heaviest credit 
load. And yet, even when advised to put out more com- 
mercial paper at a high rate of interest, as the alternative 
to failure, Wanamaker refused. He told his financial peo- 
ple that he was “not going to have his name go begging 


RIDING THE STORM 125 


on paper.” He preferred to trust in the loyalty and good 
sense of his large creditors and in the ability of the banks 
to see him through. Although day after day he faced 
insolvency, he remained cheerful and hopeful. He thanked 
God for his good health, for his ability to remain “in the 
saddle,” and he wrote that “it is real fun to have all the 
details of this business in my hands again—everything 
passes through me, and I am attentive to matters of routine 
that I have not thought about for fifteen years.” He 
likened himself to a captain piloting a ship, and declared 
that there was “new strength and inspiration” in riding 
every wave. “The waves are breaking hard, but they do 
not engulf me.” He obeyed the old hymn and counted 
his blessings. These, and not his appalling difficulties, he 
dwelt upon, taking joy in “commanding two ships whose 
crews are all that a captain could ask for.” He entered 
upon the day’s work as “going out to battle, with a musket 
on my shoulder.” He did not know what the morrow 
would bring forth, but, “Mother was in to-day,” and that 
gave him joy and comfort. He refused to join in “the 
hysterical advertising elsewhere. We have concluded to 
go along in our unsensational way and not do any crazy- 
quilt pages.” 
On November 13 he wrote: 


The most serious of the hard times is just here and it is difficult to 
forecast the future. The luxuries are not selling—-silks, pianos, jewelry, 
and the sales in N. Y. are heavily less all the month and now we are 
falling off here. Merchants and manufacturers are all dreadfully poor 
and cannot turn round, as stock gamblers, and cliques in New York have 
all the money. . . . This is not a pessimistic spell upon me, but a deep 
conviction forced upon me after a week of digging into facts that are 
cropping out all over the country showing its poverty and needs. But I 
feel right well and equal to a lot of work, though I can’t keep up to 
R. W.’s steam engine. 


126 JOHN WANAMAKER 


And on November 19: 


This Tuesday is another new day of fighting and conquest. I have 
been all over the place reviewing the troops and we are in battle order. 
The Christmas time percentages began yesterday as a new boon and pos- 
sible incentive to greater efforts. Having not so many spenders and sell- 
ing lower priced goods we must strive more to please all who come. . . 
But for God’s grace I should have been submerged by the unforeseen 
circumstances. Before the end of the month we shall have emerged 
from the heavy part of our load. December promises almost entire relief. 
It has all come around by own own labor and adjustments and without 
any financial help of any sort outside of ourselves—practically the work 
of R. and myself, humanly speaking, and by the great goodness and 
help of our Heavenly Father who has given us wisdom and strength 





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ge) a) 


RIDING THE STORM 127 


in body, mind, and heart, to do the best things and to make for us the 
path we have walked in by His clearing the obstacles in the road. 


During the critical weeks of November setbacks came 
unexpectedly several times, despite Wanamaker’s optimism. 
Firms with whom he had been doing business for a genera- 
tion, and upon whom he had counted, would sometimes 
demand a settlement. He was at his wits’ end, and there 
were days when he confessed to himself that he was being 
pushed to the wall. 

But once, when he was put to the test, he would not 
admit himself beaten, although a way out was offered him. 
Thinking that they could tempt him to give up the fight, a 
certain group made him an offer which seemed to them to 
be decidedly to his advantage, under the circumstances. 
They announced their willingness to buy him out, giving 
him a price to be set by impartial appraisers for his build- 
ings and stocks, and $10,000,000 in addition for the name 
and good will of John Wanamaker. Acceptance of this 
offer would have enabled him to emerge from a panic a 
rich man; on the other hand, its refusal, it was intimated 
to him, might mean that his fortune would be swept away. 
Wanamaker refused even to discuss it." Adverse circum- 
stances might compel him to part with his buildings and 
their stocks, but his name was not for sale. 

Wanamaker owed more than he knew at the time to men 
whose faith in him persisted throughout the crisis. The 
board of the United States Steel Corporation, for example, 


*In recounting this incident, Wanamaker said that he had in mind also— 
as he had had throughout the panic days—the fortunes of his 13,000 
employees and their families. “But I did not mention it to those men, 
for they would not have understood the point of honor involved. If I had 
told them that the captain could not abandon the ship to save himself, they 
would have thought I was a crazy old fool. They did, anyway. TI could 
not have quoted to them what the Proverbs say about the value of a good 
name.” 


128 JOHN WANAMAKER 


carried over his large account to 1908." Other creditors 
rejected the suggestions made to them to take action that 
would result in a receivership. Wanamaker’s paper was 
widely and energetically protected by those who, for various 
reasons, did not want to see him go under. These factors 
in his glorious and successful fight, however, do not detract 
from the vital importance of the man’s own role. All that 
Wanamaker had been and had done in the past would not 
have saved him. The fact that his assets were far greater 
than liabilities would not have saved him. Financial panics 
strike at the highest, and none is too solidly rooted to 
depend upon past performance as protection against the 
storm. Wanamaker rode the storm because he was on the 
bridge of the ship.” What he was in the autumn of 1907, 
and not what he had been before, brought him safely 
through. Had he lost his grip for a single hour, had he 
wavered or hesitated, he would have gone down. His faith 
in himself, his buoyancy, his unconcern, his fighting spirit, 
his sense of individual responsibility, combined to enable 
him to ride the storm. He could not fail, because, as he 
wrote, “I am going on day after day with a heart strong 

* Judge Gary told the biographer that when the Wanamaker account came 
up—it was a large one for structural steel—and a member moved that it be 
carried over to February, there was no discussion, no dissent. All the Board 
had confidence in John Wanamaker, and were glad to do what they could 
to help him. Not only did they carry him over, but later granted him the 
same favorable terms for the rest of the steel for the Philadelphia building 
that they had quoted him for the first section, when the market price was 
lower. 

* One close to Mr. Wanamaker, after reading this chapter in manuscript, 
wrote to the biographer: ‘Those 1907 days were something to remember, 
when even the stock ticker went so far as to report that Wanamaker’s had 
failed. With pressure upon him that would have killed half a dozen men, 
I never once saw Mr. Wanamaker lose his nerve; nor do I believe he lost an 
hour’s sleep. His method was to give each individual matter that came 
before him his full and undivided attention, and when disposed of for the 
time being, to go on to the next, without flurry or worry. Although Mr. 
Wanamaker believed that there was a conspiracy to drive him to the wall, 


he did not permit it to sour his life or dampen his enthusiasm for things that 
lay ahead of him.” 


RIDING THE STORM 129 


in the belief that the Heavenly Father has me in His keep- 
ing and will guide me and do for me what is best.” 

This deep religious faith is revealed almost every day 
in the diary; and it is significant that he always spoke of 
being “‘so very well.” He was “seldom tired,” and physi- 
cal well-being gave him a “hopeful spirit still about the 
future.” 

On December 4, he wrote: 


I am counting off the days one by one as we travel to the land of 
deliverance. In a fortnight more we shall be almost through the thickets, 
I believe January will see me quite out into the open again and with 
blue skies—to stay, practically, so far as my human knowledge and power 
can forecast. I am so thankful for this Cape of Good Hope close at 
hand. 


But there were still “rough seas to travel,” requiring 
“skill and faith—I don’t know which is more needed.” In 
the first fortnight of December the Philadelphia business 
decreased over $150,000, and New York over $170,000. 
This was in the face of the greatly increased selling space, 
involving larger overhead. Wanamaker wrote: 


It is a new experience for us to have so much of our excellent adver- 
tising and the best of it fall dead both in N. Y. and Phila. Some classes 
of goods, such as dresses, china, silks, pianos, jewelry, no attention is 
paid to at all. But I think there is a little let-up in the squall. The 
feeling is general that the worst is known and that in a week or ten 
days the banks will pay specie and notes again. It will take a good 
while though for the people to get over the scare and spend money 
freely once more. ‘The November days were hard and heavy for me 
but they are now safely and successfully past. 


On December 16 business was still slow: 


All things are moving right along as I wish, yet not quite as fast 
as they would were it possible to keep up our sales. N. Y. and Phila. 
are both selling as many pieces but all of so much less value that the 
amounts are less and this gives me less money—but it is all doing so well 


130 JOHN WANAMAKER 


that I am full of comforts and thankfulnesses. I am not letting a single 
thing fret me. Out of it all I shall have experiences and lessons never 
to be lost. We shall be better merchants all of us for the vanished senti- 
ments that we supposed were existing from forty years of business 
connections. 


Three days later Wanamaker felt that times were not 
improving: | 


More and more people are out of work and many large employers are 
cutting down. The uncertainty of the future is the sole cause and this 
is engendered by the banks not being of any use to the manufacturers. 
The financial world is in a great mess and no one can see far into the 
future, whether a 2/3 or 3/4 business should be provided for. Our sales 
are steadily falling off in spite of tremendous efforts, but I am quite clear 
that we are suffering less than others. ‘The people seem to feel that they 
are sick and cannot have any Christmas or that Santa Claus has broken 
his leg and cannot get about as of old. People’s spirits and the business 
have to be pumped up day and night. 


January and February entries indicate that the aftermath 
of the panic was so severe that only constant vigilance would 
prevent the indefinite continuance of serious financial embar- 
rassment in the mercantile business. But Wanamaker 
remained cheerful and hopeful: 


There is much unrest everywhere. Rates of money are lower, but the 
railroads want the first call, and their needs are said to be from 400 to 
600 millions at once. ‘This will make congested conditions for general 
business for a long time. As to ourselves, we are making good progress 
steadily toward the winning post, and shaping everything not to be caught 
again like the 5 foolish virgins. It is a hard lesson to have to learn, 
but discipline is sometimes needful. I am sure I shall be the better 
for learning to depend on myself, humanly speaking, rather than on the 
financial systems of our country that now operate by the might and money 
power of a few men. 

I am cheerfully, yes, hopefully, living a day at a time, and all the 
time seeing things clear up. We are still in a hard and difficult place, 
but all things are overcomable, and so I go on with patience, well assured 
of the desired outcome. The panic may come again sometime, just as it 


i i 


RIDING THE STORM 131 


did last year, but we shall take care not to be subject to such a pressure. 

I am so busy trying to reshape the N. Y. store that I found lying in 
the trough of the sea. The business that came was upon the Philadelphia 
reputation and much that we got left us because we were not found 
worthy. 


When asked to express in one sentence the sime qua non 
of success Wanamaker answered, “Being one’s own most 
merciless critic.” His diaries show that he did not spare 
himself—or others—when he was going through the deep 
waters of the autumn and winter of the great panic. His 
own shortcomings as a financier he analyzed with remarkable 
acuteness; and he did not attempt to justify himself— 
although at times he let his pride as a merchant explain 
getting in too deeply in stocks. He had always gone on 
the principle that Wanamaker’s should be in a position to 
offer customers the best of everything and plenty of it. He 
scored himself, too, for having let pride stand in the way 
of comparatively easy financing of the new buildings, which 
would have avoided the crisis, by mortgage bonds; and he 
recognized that he had been unwise in tying up his own 
money in too ambitious realty undertakings. During all 
the panic period he had the strange experience of being 
worth millions, and yet finding himself unable to get money 
out of the banks or on government bonds.’ He had built 
and equipped the new buildings in New York and Phila- 
delphia without a mortgage or a mechanics’ lien. He had 
no mortgages against the New York buildings, and only a 
little over a million dollars on the Chestnut Street front- 
age in Philadelphia, “part of which was original purchase 
mortgages, carried largely because we had 4-per-cent 


* Speaking at the Fidelity Life Convention on September 10, 1913, John 
Wanamaker said that life insurance was the best sort of savings bank, and 
to illustrate he declared, “Some of my policies were so written that when 
you could not get any money out of the banks or on government bonds in 
the panic of 1907, the insurance companies loaned money on them.” See 
below, p. 233; and also vol. i, p. 346. 


132 JOHN WANAMAKER 


money.” No merchant in the United States held individu- 
ally such assets—and yet Wanamaker had allowed himself 
to get into a ticklish situation. He paid for it; and he 
learned the lesson. 

That he kept his head every day and all day long, and 
that there was never a time when his buoyancy and equa- 
nimity left him, we know from the record. He wasted no 
time in reproaching himself or scolding his associates, but 
devoted all his energies to getting out of the hole. And 
after it was all over there were no post-mortems. Every- 
body had made mistakes, including himself; but they had 
pulled through gloriously. The unforgivable sin, in Wan- 
amaker’s eyes, was disloyalty. In all the months of acute 
nervous tension there was no anger expressed over things 
left undone or poor judgment. The only sharp note 
comes in recording defection and disloyalty and outspoken 
lack of faith on the part of men with whom he had been 
doing business and others whom he had always considered 
as his friends. There was only one kind of friendship for 
Wanamaker, only one kind of relation with associates and 
employees—sticking together through thick and thin. But 
the experience did not embitter him, although he was 
wounded and disappointed. “Why should I consider it a 
terrible experience?” he wrote afterward to a friend. “It 
was a great lesson—and then, blessed discovery, ’most 
everybody stuck by me.” 

The unsettled conditions following the panic did not 
disappear with the spring and summer of 1908. On July 6 
we find this entry: 


It is noonday and I have no desire to eat what is set before me except 
the cantaloupe and the iced tea. The dullness of the days for sales is 
something never experienced in our business hitherto and it is very hard 
to get used to diminishing figures. Were it other than temporary there 
would be at least one blue man around. I have had the number of 


RIDING THE STORM 133 


schedules of sales for June 1907 and 1908 taken off by Depts. And 
there is a vast difference in the comparisons. But the total of the sched- 
ules appears to be about the same in spite of the lessened values, showing 
that the people came and spent what they could. 


Wanamaker was level-headed, as usual, and looking for 
“the rift in the clouds,” when he kept in mind the number 
of sales and did not go by value alone. He realized that 
money was tight and that most people simply could not buy 
high-priced goods. As long as there was no falling off in 
the number of sales, he could feel that his stores were hold- 
ing their own. But it was a hard cross to bear, that the 
first year in which the new sections of the Philadelphia 
building were open and in which he had the use of the fine 
new building in New York, should prove to be a year of 
falling off—for the first time in his long business career. 
And there had been no respite for him after the grilling 
experiences of the previous winter. Ogden was gone. 
Thomas B. Wanamaker had died. The elder Wanamaker, 
puzzled by the unprecedentedly long period of depression 
and pessimism in New York, had to give more and more 
time to business problems there.* Single-handed and an 
outsider, he kept sounding the note of confidence in New 
York business circles. In his advertisements, in interviews, 
and in speeches, he protested against the atmosphere of 
demoralization that pervaded New York business circles. 

It was when the Wanamaker business had hardly 
emerged from the crisis, and his own people were still 
apprehensive and disheartened, that he sent a ringing tele- 
gram to the Looking Forward Club of his New York store: 


May I say in dead earnest, and in love for my country, that I believe 
in the future prosperity of the business in New York, where so many 


*From the diary: “R. cannot spread himself over two places with advan- 
tage; Philadelphia cannot spare him and there is no one in sight in Phila- 
delphia to take his place. With T. B. W. and R. C. O. gone, my duty to 
New York is compelling.” 


134 JOHN WANAMAKER 


setbacks have been given to it during the past year, speaking from my 
outlook in the pilot’s little cabin. The only thing to do is to turn 
squarely about the steering wheel of all such as desire to avoid the shoals 
that have wrecked others, and keep to the narrow but deep and safe 
channel of the clear waters, where we have always found good sailing.* 


Wanamaker was in his seventy-first year when the 
Christmas season of 1908 failed to bring the return to 
normal conditions that he had so ardently hoped for and 
heralded. But he expressed in deeds his faith in the future. 
Again the master of ample funds, he placed large orders 
for the New York store, which helped out many a manu- 
facturer and wholesaler; and he went ahead with the 
remainder of the Philadelphia building. The long-delayed 
reward came in 1909, when business “picked up” again, and 
began a new curve upward that lasted as long as he lived. 
Never again were there rumors of his failure. The com- 
pletion of the Philadelphia building was successfully 
financed; commercial paper was gradually retired; and the 
Wanamaker stores flourished. 

But there was one loss that came while Wanamaker was 
riding the storm from which he never recovered. In the 
most critical days of November, 1907, Thomas B. Wana- 
maker lay desperately ill in an apartment that he had fur- 
nished to be near his newspaper in his North American 
building. The diary references are frequent, and full of 
anguish. The doctors told John Wanamaker that his son 
would never be able to work again and that he would have 
to retire from the firm, as Ogden had done. Thomas B. 
Wanamaker went to Egypt, and returned to Paris at the 
end of February, where he died on March 2, 1908, at the 
age of forty-seven. We refrain from quotations, which 
would show how this anxiety through the critical months, 
and then the bereavement, added to the burdens of the 


* Sent from the Philadelphia store on May 1, 1908. 


RIDING THE STORM 135 


man who was making the great fight of his life. It is all 
too personal and does not belong to the world. 

Wanamaker did not relax or go away for a vacation. He 
wrote that he felt the responsibility of his “captaincy of 
the business” all the more, now that his son was gone. And 
because of his great grief he was glad that there were criti- 
cal problems that had to be faced and solved. Shortly 
after Thomas’s death, he wrote: 


The sense of being useful, the feeling that I am needed, makes me 
glad to live and work—and I think that is why I am still effective, at 
least I hope I am. The uncolored truth about my health is that it is 
perfect. I am so happy to be ready for each new day with a full stock 
of vigor, courage, confidence and hope. How rapidly the changes of 
life come and how well to strive for a faith built upon the Rock of Ages. 


CHAPTER X 
LINDENHURST 


F how the Wanamakers bought a house at Chelten 

Hills in 1868 and of the development of the country 
home of the thirty-year-old merchant during the succeeding 
twenty years into Lindenhurst, an estate of a hundred acres, 
we have already written. The new home, completed in 
1884, was built of gray stone quarried on the grounds, and 
its outstanding feature was the space devoted to wide 
porches surrounding the building. As at Cape May Point, 
the Wanamakers sacrificed the outward appearance of their 
house, to a certain extent, to out-of-doors facilities. They 
both loved rocking-chairs and a view, and they did not 
allow architects to deny them this. What the house lacked, 
however, was more than compensated for in the beauty of 
the grounds. Well up on the side of the hill whose slope 
was all lawn, Lindenhurst was strikingly mirrored in an 
artificial lake. 

During the years in Washington, Lindenhurst saw pretty 
nearly as much of its master and mistress as in previous 
years. For their summers were not spent abroad, and in 
the spring and autumn there were week-ends not devoted 
wholly to Bethany. In 1891 Wanamaker wrote to a friend 
that he had never quite appreciated all that he had actually 
—and potentially—at Lindenhurst until he had gone to 
Washington to live. The same enthusiasm followed the 
long trips abroad of the 1890’s and the 1900’s. Getting 
home was not going to the town house on Walnut Street, 
but being able to unpack one’s things and dig oneself in at 

136 


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LINDENHURST 137 


Lindenhurst. The expressions are Wanamaker’s. That is 
how he felt. 

When he was abroad and the desire to buy many things 
took possession of him, he was constantly thinking of Lin- 
denhurst. It was the same with Mrs. Wanamaker. Foun- 
tains and benches from Italy; rock shrubs from Switzerland; 
fallow deer from Hagenback’s in Hamburg; red tiles from 
Marseilles; tapestries and pictures from Paris; house and 
table linen from Belfast—John Wanamaker and his wife, 
now old enough for their children to smile at them for what 
they did and how they thought, consigned an amazing 
variety of purchases like these to Lindenhurst. 

During the 1890’s saddle horses for the older folks began 
to give ways to hackneys, and croquet on the lawn became 
more popular than tennis. Mrs. Wanamaker multiplied 
the greenhouses, where she could have constant new inter- 
ests and exercise without too great effort; and her husband 
went in for registered cows and a model dairy. 

As they grew older Wanamaker remained markedly more 
active than his wife. At Lindenhurst, as elsewhere, he 
was restless and liked to keep on the go. Organized sports 
bored him. He had little interest in trying to become pro- 
ficient in games that required constant practice. But he 
would walk long miles all over the country. He did not 
mind climbing. He stoutly maintained that he could stand 
cold and wet as well as the next man, and kept paying— 


*A friend has written us: “They tried to persuade him to take up golf, 
but he never could see what fun Mr. Rockefeller got out of ‘knocking a 
little ball about’.”” A Scotchman, who is known as the father of golf in the 
United States, says that John Wanamaker first spoke to him about golf in 
1908. But he did not take up the game until during the war, when he took 
some lessons. He did well on the putting greens, the Scotchman explains, but 
“just as he was beginning to get distance with his wood clubs, particularly the 
short spoon, he had the misfortune to stumble and hurt his shoulder, so that he 
was forced to stop playing.” But given the fact that he was still active and 
alert in 1917, although eighty years old, and that he persisted in the things 
he liked, it is reasonable to suppose that golf had failed to win his interest. 


138 JOHN WANAMAKER 


sometimes heavily—for his indiscretions. He never got 
too old to run along with the young folks and repeat end- 
lessly for grandchildren the stunts which, in an unguarded 
moment, he had let them know that he could do. The 
“aoain” of a child was a dare that he always took. What 
had seemed natural in the younger man, and not infra dig. 
for a Philadelphia merchant, astonished those who looked 
on Wanamaker as a big millionaire and a famous public 
man. But Wanamaker refused to pose. He had not 
needed to do it when he was young, and he had not acquired 
the unconscious habit of inhibitions for dignity’s sake. 

In his fifties and sixties, he remained so full of spirits, 
so bubbling over with energy that, being at Lindenhurst, 
where he could scamper around and play to his heart’s con- 
tent, was a tremendous outlet for him. He was devoted 
to his family and loved to be with them. In town he 
scarcely saw them. At Lindenhurst they seemed to be 
around most of the time. And in the country it was so 
easy and delightful to entertain friends. It was a comfort 
to the father and mother that Thomas and Rodman built 
homes near Lindenhurst, and that after the daughters mar- 
ried they, too, were not lost to the home circle. 

A notable annual event was the entertainment of the 
Bethany Superintendent’s Bible Class, afterward the Bible 
Union, and then the Roman Legion of the Brotherhood. 
The members of the class with their families spent a day 
every autumn with the Wanamakers. It became in time a 
big gathering, but Wanamaker always managed to preserve 
its intimate character. He stayed home from business that 
day and devoted himself entirely to his guests. The cus- 
tom, begun in the 1880’s, was continued as long as the 
Superintendent lived. 

Although they had their town houses, gradually father 
and sons—perhaps partly unconsciously—put more and 





Wir A BETHANY BROTHERHOOD MAN AT THE ANNUAL Laspor Day REUNION AT 
LINDENHURST! 


A snapshot of John Wanamaker when he was over eighty 


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LINDENHURST 139 


more of the things they prized into the country homes. It 
was a great shock when Meadowbrook, Thomas B. Wana- 
maker’s house, was burned in 1901. The loss of treasures 
that could not be replaced was appreciable. Thomas never 
rebuilt the home. But it shows how something does go 
wrong with the best-laid plans that John Wanamaker should 
have thought such a misfortune impossible to happen to 
Lindenhurst. He believed that his home was fireproof, 
for he had been so assured by the most competent archi- 
tects. An elaborate system of fighting fire, with the water 
of the artificial lake always available, had been devised and 
installed when Lindenhurst was first built. After the burn- 
ing of Meadowbrook, experts were called in once more. 
They made some changes, put in the latest inventions, and 
told John Wanamaker not to worry. 

On February 8, 1907, as if to mark the beginning of 
what was going to be the hardest year of his life, Linden- 
hurst was destroyed by fire.” Mr. and Mrs. Wanamaker 
were in their city house. By telephone they tried to direct 
the salvaging of the things they loved. It was an icy 
winter night, and they did not dare to go out. Although 
willing hands worked feverishly to rescue the art treasures 
and did succeed in saving the most famous of the paintings,” 
Wanamaker lost his collection of Americana, autographs, 
first editions, and books and manuscripts painstakingly gath- 
ered for the purpose of writing a life of Martin Luther. 


* The origin of the fire was tragically simple—a maid had forgotten to 
turn off the current after using an electric iron. 

* T. B. Wanamaker’s losses in 1901 in pictures had been estimated at 
$1,500,000. In the Lindenhurst fire the irreparable losses were Murillo’s 
“Our Lady of Madrid”; Rubens’ “Two Angels Holding a Garland of Fruit”; 
Benjamin West’s “Saviour”; and Venetian scenes by Canaletto. ‘The two 
Munkacsy canvases were rescued by neighbors, who went after them the 
first thing of all, also three pictures of Rubens, nine of Van Dyck, and 
celebrated pictures of Hals, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Titian, Lawrence, Rey- 
nolds, Hogarth, Romney, Turner, Constable, Opie, Gainsborough, Nattier, 
Chardin, Le Brun, and Largilliére. Most of the tapestries and porcelains, 
and all of the rugs and books, however, were lost. 


140 JOHN WANAMAKER 
The fire completely destroyed the house. The appraised © 


loss was over two million dollars. 

In his orders by telephone Wanamaker had been insisting 
that the things prized by his wife be rescued while there 
was yet time. He gave formal directions to this effect. 
Consequently, most of Mrs. Wanamaker’s furnishings and 
art objects were carried to the lawn. They were stored in 
the stable. Asif what they had suffered were not enough, 
while the Wanamakers were abroad in July of the same 
year spontaneous combustion in the hayloft destroyed the 
stables and the stored treasures. In the winter the severe 
cold had prevented fighting the fire. In the summer, 
extreme heat brought more fire. It developed that Mrs. 
Wanamaker had gradually been moving her possessions to 
Lindenhurst and that everything she owned was there. 

The next morning, before he realized the number of 
canvases that had been saved, John Wanamaker faced the 
total loss of all that he had collected in more than twenty- 
five years, and of a home whose sentimental value to his 
wife and him could not be weighed. That he had insurance 
was no consolation. All who have been through a devas- 
tating fire know that insurance policies have to do only with 
material values. In a home that has long been lived in, 
these count for little. The first sentence in Wanamaker’s 
diary that morning is, “It will be a blessed thing for us if 
all our fires are in this world and not in the next.” 

There was never a thought in John Wanamaker’s mind 
to abandon Chelten Hills. Since the early days of his mar- 
ried life Lindenhurst had been home in a way that the town 
house never had. As they prospered, the Wanamakers had 
moved from place to place in Philadelphia. All city folk 
do that. Chelten Hills had been their home for forty years. 
After all, it was the grounds and not the house or its con- 
tents that counted. The dense woods, mostly chestnuts and 


LINDENHURST I4I 


oaks, on the Mather place that they had originally bought 
were still there. The brooks still ran down the hill to 
Tacony Creek. Fire had not changed the upward roll of 
land, with the high plateau from which the view would still 
be the same. It was the view that the Continental soldiers 
had enjoyed when they had their signal post there in the 
memorable winter of 1777-8. The road that bounded Lin- 
denhurst on the north had been used by Washington when 
his army marched on the British at Germantown, and it was 
along this road that the defeated Continentals retreated to 
Valley Forge. The stone bridge spanning Tacony Creek 
dated from 1798. Mather’s old mill, remodeled as an 
electric-light plant and power house, had not gone up in 
the flames. That Lindenhurst should be rebuilt was never 
questioned. 

Wanamaker announced that on the very first day of 
spring the foundations of the new Lindenhurst would be 
laid on the site of the old building. “It is for Mother 
Mary B.,” he wrote, ‘‘and the plans are to be submitted to 
her. We shall make it as she wants it—stone by stone, 
room by room.” As far as the owner could have it so, arch- 
itects being what they are, his wife’s wishes were respected. 

The new Lindenhurst is unusual among the large sub- 
urban homes of Philadelphians in that it was built after 
Mr. and Mrs. Wanamaker had lived on the spot for forty 
years. A lifetime of experience went into the planning of 
the house. There was nothing haphazard in the way the 
house faced, in the arrangements of the rooms, in the expos- 
ure of the great sun parlor; and the hall, rectangular in 
form, was constructed to have the light just right for the 
hangings of the pictures. In the large salons and the 
dining room, also, the pictures for the walls were in mind 
when the plans were drawn. Since they had built the 
earlier home a quarter of a century before, John and Mary 


142 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Wanamaker had come to know the palaces of Europe and 
they had bought their pictures. In the old Lindenhurst 
there had been a gallery for paintings, and the library had 
been altered and enlarged several times for books. In the 
new Lindenhurst the pictures were an integral part of the 
building, and the library was constructed to hold the books 
that Wanamaker wanted to put there. 

A formal and detailed description of the new Linden- 
hurst is out of place here. We need only to say that the 
great house, and everything on the grounds, give the 
impression of a home that was lived in. It was not ready- 
made, and there was never any stop in the development of 
the grounds. The Wanamakers loved natural beauty and 
native planting. Trees and flowers were their passion, and 
they had in common the interest of following plants from 
the greenhouses to the places they themselves selected out 
of doors. Honeysuckle was their favorite flower, and they 
loved climbing roses and flower beds in gay colors." The 
study of birds was the pursuit of a lifetime, and Mrs. Wan- 
amaker so thoroughly sympathized with her husband’s 
liking for squirrels and rabbits that she had no dogs on 
the place. Hunting they never indulged in, themselves, 
and they refused to allow their people to use buckshot 
against birds that were deemed pests.” They stayed at 


*“At the supper table”? on June 27, 1910, Wanamaker jotted down: 
“A bunch of crimson ramblers is in the center of the table, encircled with 
honeysuckle. The Lindenhurst fences are rich with vines, golden, white, and 
red, whose perfume rises to you.” 

*“T had my dinner out upon the front porch, which is only accessible to 
the robins, of which I counted seventeen. There are really hundreds of them 
here all over the place, for the shot of a gun is never heard on the premises.” 
We cannot refrain from quoting a graphic editorial: “ ‘What is a bird 
good for?’ some people ask. If you could have heard yesterday morning’s 
pre-sunrise musicale of the birds around the white porch, where they flock 
for breakfast, you would say that you never heard such singing in all your 
life from any human beings. There they were, a happy family,—robins, 
bluebirds, blackbirds, threshers, meadow larks, sparrows, bobolinks, not all 
singers, out trying to practice their scales, and some of them half fizzling a 
note or a whistle, as if they were dreaming in their sleep.” 


ISYNHNAGNIT MIN FHL 


(4a “HD 9 (0704) 








LINDENHURST 143 


Lindenhurst until after the Christmas holidays, and moved 
back in the early part of May. During the summers that 
John Wanamaker felt that he had to stick by his business, 
and when the rest of the family were away, he lived in a 
little house known as the bungalow, where he could enjoy 
“the simple life” of his friend Charles Wagner. For the 
erandchildren there was a playhouse called the Birds’ Nest, 
perfectly equipped in miniature to the smallest kitchen 
utensil. 

A delightful pursuit of the latter days was the grand- 
father’s walks and talks with his “little folk.” For his 
grandchildren he invented the “‘squeegeecumsquees,” a mar- 
velous family who inhabited the rocks and woods and 
hedges and did all sorts of things. The children could 
never see them when he pointed them out, so he had to 
tell what the squeegeecumsquees were doing. Some of the 
stories he wrote down. They are too fragmentary to repro- 
duce, but they illustrated his fertile imagination and show 
how he could transport himself at any time into a world 
of his own creating. 

Letters, diaries, and addresses are full of references to 
things done and seen at Lindenhurst. On a June Sunday 
in 1909 he wrote: 


Rising at 6:15, not sleeping well—the bungalow was warm and the 
night was wet. But the morn is bright. I came down a few minutes 
before breakfast and there was no one up except in the kitchen. 

I went out into a bed of rhododendrons sixty feet square—only it was 
oval. Out of it bounced almost across my feet a brown-tailed rabbit. 
Bees were humming, birds were singing, chicks were waking and crowing 
up the daylight, and cows at the barn were mooing for the milkers and 
all about was the Sunday peace, even in a whistling boy that passed along 
the road. 

After prayers with Sebastian alone and breakfast I autocarred to town, 
picking up Ellinger and Horney on the way, and such a welcome as I 
had from the big and little Bethanyites! 


144 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Many of the editorials of the last decade of Wanamaker’s 
life were written at Lindenhurst. For instance, on Thanks- 
giving Day of 1917: 

Mother Earth woke yesterday morn to find her face covered with the 
silent snow. Even the stone walls had put on white nightcaps in the dark. 

Huge white Christmas leaves glistened on the trees, and the green 
hedges and the bushes were delicately embroidered in snow white. 

A white horse crept up the hill and a gray squirrel ran along the 
top fence rail, looked around, and hurried back to his nest in the crotch 
of the oak tree, as there was no breakfast for him in sight any place else. 

Bright-eyed and wise little squirrel, to be aforehand with stores laid up 
for stormy days. ‘‘Lessons in brooks, sermons in stones, and good in 
everything.” 

The bees, the rippling streams, the birds, the squirrels and the little 
chipmunks are good teachers of forehandedness. 

Surely in this blessed land of rich, well-stored harvests, in spite of 
absences of our boys, we can have at least a glad Thanksgiving time. 


The joy of life at Lindenhurst departed when Mrs. 
Wanamaker died at Atlantic City in the summer of 1920. 
She had been away for many months, and almost up to 
the last Wanamaker believed that she would return. He 
used to go to her sitting room and pat the arm of the chair 
in which she loved to sit, and then go on without a word 
to his own apartments. The rooms were kept just as if 
she were there, with her favorite flowers freshly cut each 
day. After her death Wanamaker continued to go to Lin- 
denhurst, and he had his usual annual gatherings of church 
people there. But the spring days were spent in Florida, 
and during his last two summers, because he could not go 
through to the end of the sonnet, it was hard for the one 
who remained to “summon to the sessions of sweet silent 
thought remembrance of things past.” 


CHAPTER XI 


Pern CONPAN YW Ob TEI SAINTS UTOHN 


“YT was by traveling that I learned to travel,’? Wanamaker 

once told a group of Masons. They readily under- 
stood what he meant when he explained the impression 
made upon him by three events in the three voyages that 
he regarded as the most memorable of his life. On his 
Holy Land cruise, in 1896, he had seen men wearing 
aprons following a little funeral in a little village above 
Beirut. It was the first time he had ever realized that 
Freemasonry was not simply a phase—of which he knew 
nothinge— of American Protestant life. And then, in his 
cruise to the Land of the Midnight Sun in 1899, the year 
after he had taken his Blue Lodge degrees, he noted that 
the highest-degree Masons on the Auguste Victoria held 
meetings in “a special room, guarded by the ship’s officers,” 
to which twenty men of different nationalities were admit- 
ted. On January 31, 1902, when he was in Bombay, he 
was able to work his way in to Lodge Perseverance, at the 
Masonic Temple, where he was present at the installation 
of the new officers of the year. 

John Wanamaker was nearly sixty years old before he 
decided to become a Mason. His home, his church, and 
his business had so completely filled his life that clubs and 
fraternal organizations failed to attract him. He did not 
hold secret organizations of any kind in high esteem, and 
he more than once expressed the opinion that they were 
undemocratic and tended to divert a man’s time, attention, 
and energy from more important activities and duties. He 

145 


146 JOHN WANAMAKER 


had said, too, that lodges were a breeding-ground for intol- 
erance. But many friends were Masons, and when one of 
them was frank enough to tell him after his bitter campaign 
of 1897 that his holding aloof from fraternal orders could 
easily be interpreted by his enemies as an indication that 
he possessed the very characteristics for which he con- 
demned them, he had food for thought. He began to 
think about Freemasonry, and discovered that most of the 
Americans he admired from Washington down to his own 
day were Masons.’ | 

At the beginning of 1898 he applied for initiation and 
received the signal honor of being admitted to the first 
three degrees, in company with his friend Rabbi Joseph 
Krauskopf, by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. It is 
probable that the move had been made without much enthu- 
siasm or expectation, and that what he learned was a great 
surprise. He discovered that the symbolism of the 
Masonic voyage was in perfect harmony with his religious 
belief and experience and thus he became a zealous neophyte 
at the age of sixty. Masonry captured his imagination, and 
he entered into the craft with devoted and intelligent 
enthusiasm. | 

In 1900 he joined Friendship Lodge No. 400, of Jen- 
kintown, near Lindenhurst, and worked his way through 
the chairs until he became Worshipful Master in 1905. 
When we consider the many interests of his busy life in 
Philadelphia, New York, and Europe between 1900 and 
the outbreak of the World War, his Masonic history is 
remarkable. Through both the Commandery and the Con- 
sistory he worked his way up to the thirty-second degree, 

* When his prejudice against fraternal orders disappeared, he was glad also 
to join the Odd Fellows, and became a member of American Star Lodge, 


No. 405. In his later years he took part on several occasions in public cere- 
monies of the I. O. O. F. 


IN THE COMPANY OF THE SAINTS JOHN 147 


and was honored with admission to the thirty-third degree 
by the Supreme Council on September 16, 1913. 
Wanamaker studied Masonry and followed it in the same 
way that he studied and followed everything that had won 
his heart. He loved to go back over the work, mastering 
the ritual, and finding in it the application of the great 
truths of the Christian philosophy of life to himself and to 
his relations with other men. It satisfied the latent mysti- 
cism in the man that the exercise of religious duties and of 
worship in the stern and rigid school of Calvinism had 
denied him. In going through the degrees he came to see 
that they were capable of an esoteric meaning of a fasci- 
natingly speculative kind that went far beyond the cut-and- 
dried utilitarianism of testing faith by works. His creed 
had always been simple and practical, and. the kind of 
religious life he had lived tended to satisfy the inner striv- 
ings of the soul with the vague emotional outlets of prayer 
and singing. Every man of esthetic temperament needs 
ritual and mystery; he craves for symbolism. When he 
finds it, the sense of beauty and order in his religious life 
is satisfied. What John Wanamaker experienced in his 
Masonic life has been well expressed by an English Free- 


mason: 


The Entered Apprentice degree represents the first dim stirrings, the 
first anxious desire to turn from worldly things toward the light; the 
Fellowcraft degree a period of enthusiastic support of some religious 
system or orthodox dogmatic church; the Master Mason degree a period 
of doubts and difficulties. The old faith, which we have accepted 
because we have been taught it, no longer holds us. We question and 
query, and there is no one to set us at rest. Then suddenly something 
occurs which shatters our faith in the society to which we belong, say 
an unjust act toward ourselves or others by those set in a position of 
trust or even of authority. The old faith lies dead—slain, perhaps, by 
those most bound in honor to be true to its high teaching. ‘The man 


148 JOHN WANAMAKER 


who has passed through this stage feels numb spiritually; his very soul 


lies shattered. He descends into the mystical grave. 


Then, of course, comes the resurrection, and through all 
the higher degrees the light is gradually revealed of the 
solid foundation upon which our religion rests, and what 
we must go through in heart and mind to become worthy 
followers of the great Exponent until, “not only with our 
lips, but in our lives,’ we can show forth “Christ in us, the 
hope of glory.” 

Shortly after he became a Mason, Wanamaker announced 
that he intended to become an active member of the craft. 
His passage through the chairs of his lodge, and the time 
he took to qualify for the higher degrees, demonstrate that 
he was as good as his word. We find in the files numerous 
reports of the Library and Museum Committee of the 
Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania of which he was chairman 
up to his death. To the Grand Lodge he presented many 
valuable books and documents, including a parchment 
Hebrew manuscript of the Pentateuch.” He set himself 
to the task of collecting Masonic certificates with such suc- 
cess that he was able to write that the Pennsylvania Grand 
Lodge’s collection was “more complete and valuable than 
the celebrated Crowe collection lately acquired by the 
Grand Lodge of England at the cost of £2,000. Among 
our French specimens is a certificate of His Serene High- 
ness Louis Philippe d’Orléans, Duc de Chartres, afterward 
King of France.” He served also on the Grand Lodge’s 
employment committee, and was made a member of the 
American Supreme Council in 1920. He was a charter 
member of the National Masonic Research Society. As a 


*J. S. Ward, Explanation of the Royal Arch Degree, page 38. 

* At Wanamaker’s request, his friend Rabbi Krauskopf made the presenta- 
tion speech. The rabbi said: “Within my hand I hold a treasure than which 
there are few comparable with it in intrinsic worth. Your librarian searched 
through the book stores of Europe for it.” 


IN THE COMPANY OF THE SAINTS JOHN 149 


lasting memorial of his devotion to Masonry he built for 
his own lodge at Jenkintown a classic temple in Doric style, 
with a lodge room seating three hundred and fifty. This 
building bears the inscription: ‘Presented to Friendship 
Lodge by Brother John Wanamaker, P. M., January 11, 
TOTR?? 

His correspondence contains many allusions to Masonic 
events. When President Roosevelt visited the Pennsyl- 
vania Grand Lodge, Wanamaker gave to every Mason 
attending a specially printed edition of Pastor Wagner’s 
Simple Life, with the printed inscription: ‘A brother 
Mason’s souvenir of the visit of President Roosevelt to the 
sesqui-centennial of Washington’s initiation as a Freemason, 
observed by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania at Phila- 
delphia, November 5, 1902.” He welcomed the conclave 
of the Knights Templar at the Philadelphia store in May, 
1903. 

From his diary we take at random four entries: 

At 9 I was at the Masonic Temple and was most courteously received 
by a Committee in the Library and escorted to the Chapter Room, a 
noble Oriental Hall with the Chapter in conclave. I was addressed by 
the High Priest in a public address and escorted to a seat on the throne 
beside the Grand King. My speech was at the Banquet and had to be 
changed on the spot to suit the occasion. ‘They were most responsive 


and cheered me at a great rate all the time and at the close with 3 cheers 
and a tiger, standing, and the band drums rolling. 


Many years later he wrote: 


I came up from Chelsea yesterday on the Seven and filled out the 
usual program at Bethany until the opening of the Sunday School was 
over, when I jumped over my rules and went with the Masonic Grand 
Lodge to observe the 125th Anniversary of its independence from British 
Masonic rule. We attended Christ Church in a body 3 or 400 strong, 
walking down Market Street from Masonic Hall. The Grand Lodge 
worshiped in Christ Church in 1796. At 12 to-day I attended the 
session of the Grand Lodge to hear the Masonic addresses. 


150 JOHN WANAMAKER 
And again: 


I am one of 600 men in the Quarterly Communication of the Grand 
Lodge of Pa., all wearing regalia. I am seated on the Tribune near the 
R. W. G. M.’s Chair, as I have made the Library Committee report. 
Another Chairman is making a report that I cannot hear, and I am sitting 
in a recess where but few see me writing. 


On November 14, 1912, we have: 


Dye been busy to-day with a General Assembly committee. Friday I 
have a Masonic degree to take in the afternoon. A telegram from Presi- 
dent Taft asks me to come to N. Y. on Monday to meet him and return 
on his train. 


His later estimate of fraternal orders is expressed in the 
peroration of his address at the laying of the corner stone 
of the Odd Fellows’ Orphanage in Philadelphia on Sep- 
tember 4, I9IT: 


“Free Masonry and Odd Fellowship have won their way 
to a firm footing throughout the globe because they make 
for good citizenship, enforcement of laws, true friendship. 
The light of kindness, love and sympathy has been kept 
burning steadily from every lodge room for centuries over 
all the earth. 

‘These orders are built upon the Bible and work with 
the Bible. . . . I count it a privilege for a man to find the 
way into any place where liquors, profanity, gambling, 
indecent books, papers and speeches are excluded and where 
he is brought face to face to be reverently taught to think 
of the word of God. 

“The binding life of a lodge is its altar, upon which lies 
an open Bible.” 


CHAPTER XII 
LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 


FTER he had acquired the habit of Europe, Wana- 
A maker was sedulously encouraged in it by all his 
family. It seemed to be—and it was—the only way to 
pry him loose occasionally from Bethany and from the 
long days in the office in Philadelphia and New York. If 
he had cared for yachting and had been willing to cruise 
in distant waters, that would have been fine. But he was 
too dependent upon human contacts to be happy where 
there were not many people and much hustle, even when 
he was taking a cure. He just had to be with people and 
live where there was action." 

Going abroad every year was the ideal way to make him 
take two ocean trips and to afford him the joy of city life 
in London and Paris without the self-imposed burden of 
full days in the office. And crossing the Atlantic, and at 
hotels in watering-places, he was in the midst of people just 
as much as in the big cities. Carlsbad and Biarritz were 
thronged with visitors from all countries, among whom 
there were invariably friends of earlier years. When he 
grew restless or became bored at one place he could go to 
another. The trouble with American resorts was that when 
this happened he would invariably return to work. 


*The biographer finds on several occasions a frank confession that any 
form of inactivity and passive restfulness bored and tired him. The secret 
of his joy in Lindenhurst was that his country mornings and evenings there 
were constantly balanced by days in the city. The pleasure he had in observ- 
ing nature was in hours off—not days off. In New York he could get all he 
wanted in Central Park or in a half-day riding swiftly in the country. 
Then he was ready to get back to the city. 


ISI 


152 JOHN WANAMAKER 


How much good the transatlantic crossing did John Wan- 
amaker is strikingly revealed in his letters and diaries. The 
day after he boarded the Prinzessin Victoria Luise on March 
16, 1903, he wrote to his Bethany scholars that he already 
felt like a new man. There was the tinge of regret at 
leaving home and all the associations in which he felt he 
“still played a part,” but, after all, was he not more effective 
both at Bethany and in his business by being away from 
them occasionally? He asked himself that question, and 
the affirmative answer was not because absence gave him 
perspective, but because on shipboard and away from the 
daily grind he had time to think and plan, to come to 
mature decisions, and to replenish his physical strength and 
“the zest of his mind.” It was too wonderful for words 
to go to bed and hear the ship’s bells strike and to know 
that there was a lookout saying, “Alles wohl.” That was 
how he felt. But the engines were pounding and the ship 
was moving. | 

His companion on this Mediterranean cruise was the 
Bethany pastor who had accompanied him on his first trip 
abroad in 1871. After a lapse of more than thirty years 
Dr. Lowrie was as fit and youthful as Wanamaker, and it 
was a great joy for the two old friends to travel again in 
Europe together. They stopped at Funchal and Gibraltar 
and arrived at Rome by way of Genoa and Florence at the 
beginning of April. It was a real sight-seeing trip and 
the two men, both well over sixty, “did” Rome and the 
surrounding country for a fortnight in tireless tourist fash- 
ion. On April 6, for example, he wrote of a long day in 
the country exploring Castle Gondolfo and the neighbor- 
hood: 


What a day it has been! From the roof of the Orsini Palace we could 
see 25 miles to the sea. The ramble in the summer sun amid magnolias, 
oleanders, other blossoming trees, and wild flowers, was delicious. We 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 153 


had a fine luncheon and a jolly time at the Ristorante Sallusti, where no 
doubt Lucullus and later Byron lunched on the same kind of soup and 
fish and cheese in their day. 


A week at Naples followed, and then the travelers went 
for the cure at Carlsbad. After three weeks Wanamaker 
left Lowrie there, and visited Paris, and then London, 
where he made a speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet and 
the next day “dined with the Steads and the Servian Min- 
ister, and afterward went with them late to the opera.” 
The next afternoon he “saw the demonstration in Hyde 
Park of the nonconformists against the Education Bill just 
passed. It was a unique spectacle, and 100,000 people were 
in it.” Of the visit of this year to the exhibition at the 
Royal Gallery we have spoken in another place.’ 

His pleasure in being homeward bound was keen. From 
his diary on May 25 “on board Wilhelm der Grosse sailing 
for America,” we take: 


Home looms up before me—its friends that I shall love more and its 
work that I shall bring new vigor to. My rambles here have not caught 
brambles, but have brought delightfulnesses, whose memory will brighten 
and lighten. 


The weeks in Europe in 1904 were spent mostly in Lon- 
don, with a cure at Carlsbad grudgingly sandwiched in 
between. The original intention had been to save London 
for the return voyage. But there was an urgent letter at 
Paris from Henniker Heaton begging his old friend to 
spend a May week-end in the country with him. So he 
shifted his plans suddenly; that he was always able to do 
this is one of the prime reasons for his happiness as well 
as his success. Reaching London on the evening of 
May 12, he wrote: 


It is a cold, fog-buried London and the channel was wintry and wet 


* See above, vol. ii, p. 79. 


154 JOHN WANAMAKER 


with mist. A perpetual scream of the fog horn racked my nerves and | 
was glad to get on the Dover dock. A cup of English tea and a cross bun 
for a sixpence warmed me and for two hours the train whirled me 
through Kent and Surrey meads and meadows, and the green hills and 
flocks of sheep lazily browsing in them were rare pictures of delight. 

It was eight o’clock when we stopped at Victoria Station. 

After dinner I had a phone message from the House of Commons 
that Lord Stanley, the Postmaster-General, was to speak, and thither | 
went, meeting my old friend Henniker Heaton, and I stayed until after 
twelve, watching the customs of the oldest and most formal] legislative 
body in the world. | 


The next day his diary tells us of the Prime Minister’s 
reception. 


At 10 Downing Street in the house of the Premier Balfour where 
Gladstone lived, I write this while the carriage is coming to take me 
home. A most brilliant party it was, over 600 of the leading people of 
London. Mr, Balfour, a bachelor, with his sister, received most gra- 
ciously and I was ushered into the series of drawing rooms where Dis- 
raeli, Salisbury, Gladstone and others, back to Pitt’s time, held their 
salons and settled grave questions. Here Benjamin Franklin walked 
about in his plain coat and commanded admiration by his simple manners, 
and homely speech. 

The first persons I met were the Duke of Norfolk and his Duchess; 
Sir Michael Hicks Beach, a leader of the House of Commons; Sir John 
Gorse; and members of the Cabinet galore. 

What a night to have! 


The week-end was spent at Bexhill-on-the-Sea, home of 
Henniker Heaton, M. P. for Canterbury. Wanamaker 
was “quite ready for the quiet and sea air,” although he 
was “sorry to lose.a Sunday in London where my old 
friends Spurgeon and F. B. Meyer and my newer friend 
at the City Temple, Mr. Campbell, all are.” Back in Lon- 
don on Tuesday he attended Stanley’s funeral at West- 
minster Abbey, and then 


went to luncheon at the Commons and saw some members, and had 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 155 


coffee on the terrace, where I met Mrs. John Strange Winter, the writer, 
and her daughters. 

I left there and went to call on Sir George Williams and Mr. Pass- 
more, and got a few books at Pater Noster Row and then returned again 
to the House of Commons and also visited the House of Lords, where I 
stayed to dinner with Sir Benjamin Stone and at nine o’clock took a 
favored seat next to the King’s seat in the gallery. The occasion was 
a momentous one that threatened the overturn of the Ministry and every- 
thing was keyed up to the highest pitch of excited interest and anxiety, 

The debate was upon a resolution regarding the proposed tariff and 
it was a two-edged sword. If adopted by the Commons it would have 
been a vote of non-confidence compelling the Ministry to resign. The 
speeches on both sides were masterly, especially Sir William Wynd- 
ham’s, Joe Chamberlain’s, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Lord Cecil and 
Mr. Asquith. 

At 12 midnight by the closure rule the House divided and all the 
members went out and came in through different doors and were counted 
for or against the question. The Government was sustained by a small 
majority. The intensity and alarm on the one side and the energy and 
bitterness on the other were new experiences for me. 


The next two days were given to excursions in the country 
which are described in the diary. There isa little “addenda 
from a Canterbury Pilgrim—to be slipped into its place 
after page 46,” which seems to have been written en route 
on Wednesday, May 18: 


My friend and I are to spend the day at old Canterbury. We are in a 
hansom on the way to the London, Chatham and Dover side of Victoria 
Station. Mr. Heaton will be waiting with a compartment secured and 
we shall be snug and unmolested in our window corners looking out— 
now we are doing it—on the woods and vales and clean homes of the 
little villages. It is a two-hour ride toward Dover before the battlements 
on the cathedral appear. Here they are. Unfortunately the Primate of 
all England is absent and we cannot have tea at the Archiepiscopal Palace, 
But to be together is better than tea, and what we see together is better 
than any social attention. 

We arrive to find Captain Lambert waiting, and his house and gardens 
are luminous with welcome. A lovely luncheon at 1:40 and some music 
by the two young ladies and then over to the great nave of the glorious 


156 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Cathedral of Thomas 4 Kempis, where a Whitsuntide service is just begin- 
ning conducted by the Dean and a majestic choir of men and boys singing 
solos, duets, and parts in the most elaborate service I have ever seen in a 
Protestant church. 

The echoes and far-away tones of the great organ and the boys with 
women’s voices singing and chanting fairly carried me off my feet. 

After the service we had only time to stroll over the Cathedral and see 
its chapels and tombs and then have a drive through the ancient town, 
the seat of the ecclesiastical empire of all England. 

I saw the new archbishop in the House of Lords, but I had no chance 
then to meet him without too much trouble. Last year when I was here 
I had delightful courtesies from Archbishop Temple and his gracious 
lady. Now he is in Heaven. Dean Farrar also, who once showed me 
over the Deanery, has gone to his reward, and there is another in his 
place here. How strange it all seems—and how suggestive! 


The trip to Windsor is described thus: 


There’s a coach and four 

At the door 

To take us to Windsor 
16 horses going and 16 returning, with four changes. Such a dash and 
trumpeting! Horses flying and everyone eying the gay coaching party. 
Now we reach the country. Larks sing to us and trees smile a sunny 
Welcome... ,.. 


On the 20th Wanamaker wrote: 


Dean succeeded yesterday in getting tickets on the through train from 
London to Carlsbad via Ostend, so off I go at 10 a.m. much to the 
disgust of my friends, who beg me to stay, but the rush of things is too 
much for me if I am to have rest. I will keep to my program to rest at 
Carlsbad and leave for another time some good things. 


When he got to Carlsbad the next day he found that 
“the lovely old hills were all still standing in their old 
places” and that “coming so often, there is to me an air of 
home about the streets and the queer domiciles.” 

His doctor found him “in better condition than this time 
a year ago.” Once more Wanamaker had to start his 


“drinks and diet and baths and all the rest.” But he 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 157 


found that “these great solitudes and silences, so far from 
all the usual things of my life, are Heaven-given remedies 
for tiredness.” Carlsbad was as of old, and in a few days 
he began to tramp, seeing “gleams of sun on the hills” and 
“far views from the terrace of the Schweitzerhof,” where 
he was breakfasting with “three or four hundred climbers,” 
and thinking that “the mountains and birds are most invit- 
ing with their smiles and songs.” 

But he would not give more than three weeks to his cure, 
and wrote on June I4: 


I always feel sorry to leave a place or person that has been good to me, 
and Carlsbad Springs have given me so many good drinks, the mountains 
so many good drives, and the wooded heights have so often bowed to me 
as I passed along that I feel them all to be good friends. Moreover the 
perfect unbroken respite from responsibility has been so good for me. 


After a few days in Paris attending the Salon and buying 
numerous pictures, Wanamaker was back in London, where 
he felt more at home than ever before in his life because 
he had received the unique distinction of being elected an 
honorary member of the Carlton Club. In announcing this 
“act of international courtesy,” the London Times stated 
that he was “the first foreigner on whom this distinction 
was conferred.” He wrote home that “I was installed as 
a member of the great and exclusive Carlton Club, with 
the Duke of Marlborough, Earl Jersey, Lords Hamilton, 
Donnamore, and Waldron.” Probably it was the unusual- 
ness of the honor that made him appreciate it so deeply 
and frequent the Carlton Club in 1904 and again in 1905, 
when the honorary membership was renewed. For, as 
we have seen, he was never anything of a club man at home. 


*On May 2, 1905, Henniker Heaton wrote: “When you come you will 
again be elected an Honorary Member of the Carlton Club for three months. 
It has been ruled that ‘foreigners’ cannot be permanent members.” Wana- 
maker enjoyed his second year in the club so much that, when he was 
returning home, he offered to present a portrait of President Roosevelt to 
the club, and, when the offer was accepted, he commissioned Sargent to 


158 JOHN WANAMAKER 


The doors of London society had opened to the 
Philadelphia merchant, to the extent that he was pre- 
sented at Court on June 22. Of his evening at Buck- 
ingham Palace he wrote that when the invitation was 
received his man Dean was “very much excited about get- 
ting me dressed up”! The secretary of the embassy, Henry 
White, “‘wanted me to hire the clothes, and I wouldn’t go 
in hired clothes. So I went to my tailor at eleven a.m. 
and browbeat him into patching some clothes together by 
eight p.M. Then I went to the House of Commons and 
saw the House of Lords in session, and then left home to 
get into my clothes, and from there to the Whitehall home 
of Mr. White.” The next morning he wrote from the 
Carlton Club, where he went to breakfast: 


I was glad enough to get off my new shoes with silver buckles at 
two o’clock this morning and I stayed abed until nine. 

It was an altogether overpowering sensation to shoot ahead of a mile 
of carriages containing titled and untitled but entitled people, and enter 
the favored door of the diplomats, and be received in the Audience 
Chamber of the King. 

The scene was brilliant. The King and Queen and the retinue of 
the households of the Royal family entered late, with a group of sixty 
ladies and gentlemen, sashed and flashed with jewels. 

The American Ambassador was announced after the Dean, and I was 
following him and was presented, and took my place with the diplomats 
in the second line in front of the King and Queen, and stood there 


paint it. This led some of the old Tories in the club to comment on the 
stronghold of British monarchy being willing to hang the portrait of 
“a President of a republic,” and to the counter-contention on the part of 
those who had decided to accept the Wanamaker offer that “England is in 
reality the greatest republic in the world.” In the discussion at the Carlton 
Club, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who presided, repudiated the suggestion 
made by some one that Wanamaker and Roosevelt were “foreigners.” Conse- 
quently the way was paved for the election of Wanamaker to honorary life 
membership. When this was announced in the press, charges were made that 
Wanamaker had been “a subscriber to the Clan-na-Gael, a rebel Irish society,” 
and that “he had sent a messenger to Krueger hoping every Englishman 
would be shot.” The club refused even to investigate the charges, calling 
them “absurd and unfounded.” 





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LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 159 


seeing everything while the 450 ladies filed in, announced by name, and 
paid their respects to the sovereigns. 

The dispersion came about 12:30 to the lovely rooms where refresh- 
ments were served. I left the people at their cups at 1:20. The King 
and his party were in another room. 


But he enjoyed an evening reception at Stafford House 
the following night more than the more formal Drawing- 
Room. Concerning the Duchess of Sutherland’s reception, 
he wrote that it came after “tea and cake with Mr. and Miss 
Choate and a drive in Hyde Park later.” 


But the night at Stafford House!!! 

Such a night 

Such a house. The finest old thing in London. 

Such a company 

Such pictures 

Such grand halls 

Such wonderful staircases. 

Such a handsome young thing was the Duchess of Sutherland at the top 
of the staircase receiving in her coronet and diamonds, 

Such a supper afterward, and best of all the fine talk 1 had with the 
Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria. 

My, but I enjoyed it! 


Another notable event was a reception at the home of the 
Marquess of Lansdowne, where he had a long talk on pro- 
tection with Joseph Chamberlain, which made a lasting 
impression upon him. Lord Stanley, Pierpont Morgan, 
and John R. Drexel joined in the discussion. But Wana- 
maker’s eyes were occupied as well as his ears, for he noted 
that Lansdowne House was “large and lordly, full of 
treasures gathered by a former Lord Lansdowne, who 
found many of Hadrian’s priceless things in Rome and got 
them for practically nothing.” 

A bit of sight-seeing was included with the round of 
social engagements. For: 


160 JOHN WANAMAKER 


This morning I called at Cheyne Walk on Mrs. Stead and then went 
over to Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle’s old house where he lived 
47 years (paid 35£ per year rent) and tried to die 21 years ago. How 
good it was to browse among the empty rooms that were the birthplaces of 
great thoughts that can never die—on a window pane taken from Carlyle’s 
Edinboro student lodgings scratched with a diamond is this: 


“Little did my mother think 
That day she cradled me 
What land I was to travel in or 
What death I should dee.” 


And gayety: 


A lovely visit to an old mansion in Cavendish Square for luncheon 
with three M.P.’s. The afternoon in the Commons and the night at— 
don’t jump when I tell you—to see Sarah Bernhardt in “La Sorciére.” 
Am I needing a governess, a guardian, and a keeper? 


The family did jump! They rubbed their eyes to see 
if they were reading right. It was a departure for Wana- 
maker to don knee breeches and silk stockings and go to 
Court. It was more of a departure—it was an unheard-of 
event—for him to cross the door of a theater. He had 
never done it before. There is no record that he ever did 
again. After he was sixty he attended the opera occasion- 
ally, because he loved the music so much. But even there 
he felt that he was out of place. As for the theater, that 
was anathema. Wanamaker did not believe in theaters, 
and said so many times. He had the curious notion that 
attendance upon theatrical performances was a form of sin. 
Afterward, when teased about the evening in London, he 
said, solemnly—and he meant it—that he felt it a duty to 
hear Sarah Bernhardt speak. He had been told so much 
about her wonderful use of her voice, and he thought that 
watching her would teach him something. 

To shrive himself he attended three services the next 


day: “to hear my friend Rev. R. J. Campbell at City 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 161 


Temple in the morning; to hear Bishop Welldon at West- 
minster Abbey at three; and to worship under my dear old 
friend Spurgeon at six-thirty.” And the next day, declin- 
ing an invitation of Lord Curzon as Lord Warden of the 
Cinque Ports to “attend him” at Dover in the ceremony 
of his induction to office, he entrained Monday morning to 
Liverpool for the Pan-Presbyterian Council, as guest of 
Ian Maclaren, pastor of a big Liverpool church. He was 
“delighted with the dignity and importance of the Coun- 
cil,’ which numbered “about 300 from every nation.” He 
went to the reception at the Lord Mayor’s, where he met 
fellow-Presbyterians from all over the world. His diary 
shows that he attended every meeting—three sessions a 
day—“and for all the time.” He was interested in the 
discussion on Higher Criticism, which “waxed hot and 
fierce,” and spoke from the floor. One evening he pre- 
sided at a popular meeting in the Philharmonic Hall. He 
referred to his host and hostess as “Mr. and Mrs. Bonnie 
Briar Bush.” At the concluding reception he “spoke a few 
words on the lawn,” and then accompanied “Dr. Watson 
Maclaren” to the graduation exercises of the University 
of Liverpool, where he was welcomed by Lord Derby. 

It is an indication of his restlessness and sudden decisions 
that we find him on Tuesday, after describing the sessions 
of the Council he had attended that day, recording: 


I am cabling home about staying for Rodman, who writes me to wait 
for him. Dear man, I would love to see him! I think I shall wait. 


And three days later, being in Liverpool, he was off for 
New York on the Campania, which he “liked very much, 
though I have not sailed on a Cunarder for 28 years.” The 


next day was the Fourth of July and there were 
no fire crackers. The 120 passengers, mostly Americans, observed the 
day at dinner. A British consul on board offered the toast to the Presi- 


162 JOHN WANAMAKER 


dent, and I was without notice called upon to offer the toast to King 
Edward and Queen Alexandra, which I did as best I could. 


This voyage was his first experience with wireless telegra- 
phy, in the development of which he was destined to play 
an important part. The entry in his diary is worth quoting: 


On the Campania, July 6, 1904. 

I received a cable unexpectedly from Mr. Heaton from the House 
of Commons by Marconi via Cape Breton, Canada, in answer to a letter 
mailed at Queenstown. ‘This kind of communication makes the sea less 
lonely. Each morning at breakfast we get a daily bulletin of all the 
news, printed on board and gathered by Marconi. Passing ships unseen 
equipped with the wireless constantly talk to us. 


Only two years before, in a Commencement address at 
Perkiomen Seminary, he had said: 

“T was talking to a member of Parliament at Carlsbad 
not a long time ago about the wireless telegraph. He had 
just been talking to Marconi a few days before, and Mar- 
coni told him that at Gibraltar the vessels on either side of 
the straits said good night and good morning and they 
were 60 miles apart. Marconi didn’t know how it was 
done, but said, ‘Anyway, I get there! ” 

London and Paris did not receive as much time in 
1905 as in 1904. Wanamaker listened to his physicians. 
In addition to his usual cure at Carlsbad he spent several 
weeks of quiet at Biarritz in his son Rodman’s home, the 
Villa Duchatel, which was once owned and occupied by 
Edward VII. From there he wrote on May 31: 


May has been a whole month given to my selfish self for health. I 
cannot say whether I like rest or not—I doubt if I do—but I am most 
grateful for so many days of relaxation and improvement in every way; 
and I must remember that it has been my privilege to enjoy so much 
while—and because—so many others are harnessed to burdens they are 
not able to lay down. I have some regrets that I could not have been 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 163 


in the gasworks battle in Philadelphia. The Gang are worse than I ever 
painted them. 


There was a week in Switzerland, which Wanamaker 
always loved, although he never tarried there for long; and 
attendance as a delegate upon the sessions of the fiftieth 
anniversary of the World’s Alliance of the Y. M. C. A. in 
Paris. That he did not stay longer in Europe was due 
to the belief that his play and rest should be strictly lim- 
ited to the spring. Others had to have their vacation in 
the summer. His sense of responsibility—really a glad 
feeling that he was still vital to the business he had cre- 
ated—is wonderfully expressed in a letter written from 


Carlsbad: 


Most gladly would I stay, but how can I when all things are adjusted 
for me to take three places during July and August—one in N. Y. and 
two in Phila.— 


as builder 
manager 
financier 
emergency man 


and as you know there will be no one on the spot to meet sudden unex- 
pected things such as fires, breaks, and accidental affairs that might occur 
~—were I to fail to report. 


In the spring of 1906 Wanamaker was accompanied by 
another Bethany pastor, Dr. Charles A. Dickey, and he 
wrote that he and the clergyman were “sorry to leave Paris 
—and the Opera,” and added that “Dr. Dickey and I are 
certainly growing wortpLy!” But he had to go to Carls- 
bad “to get the large thing for which I came away.” Never 
do his papers show more joy in Carlsbad than in 1906. He 
spoke of the waters as “God’s good brew that comes out of 
the earth for the healing of mankind.” He wrote on 
May 8: 


I never saw this Spa so gorgeously attractive so early in the year as it 


164. JOHN WANAMAKER 


is now. The foliage, the birds, the air, the sense of healthfulness, 
gloriously woo us to the abandonment of care with the promise of 
repair. Dr. Dickey and I have been installed in places at the morning 
assembly at the Springs, voted into the Diet Ranks, and made members 


of the Bathing Club at the Kaiserbad. 


A day’s program, written in his own hand, indicates that 
Carlsbad offered “enough to do for the man that soon grew 
restless because he hadn’t enough to do,” whenever he went 
away from his business. 

Rising at 6:40 

Off to the Springs at 7:10 

Up to the Doctor’s at 8:10 

Taking treatment until 8:45 

Up the Hills to Jaeger House to breakfast 9:15 

Walk down to Kaiserbad 9:50 

Kaiserbad bath to 10:45 

Church—English Episcopal 11:10 

Return to Hotel at 12:15 

Massage 12:20 to 1:00 

Dressing to 1:10 

Walking up to Savoy to lunch with Joseph Pulitzer and friends at 1:30 

Luncheon in the garden for 2 hours 

Return to hotel at 4:00 


Among the many Aabitués of Carlsbad none was more 
stimulating to Wanamaker than Pulitzer, whom he had 
known since 1883, when he stopped over in Philadelphia 
on his way to New York to complete the organization of 
the World. Pulitzer, George W. Childs, and Wanamaker 
were luncheon guests of A. J. Drexel on that occasion. 
The vicissitudes of national politics, as we have seen in an 
earlier chapter, made the World one of the most bitter 
critics of Wanamaker in the early years of the Harrison 
administration. By attempts to discredit the man through 
attacking his business Wanamaker felt that Pulitzer was 
“hitting beneath the belt.” But he had learned to dis- 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 165 


tinguish between the newspaper owner and the personal 
friend, and only a few years later Wanamaker’s telegraphic 
response to the World’s request for New-Year sentiments 
from leading Americans was: “I wish that my friend, Mr. 
Pulitzer, might get back his eyes and be able to read his 
own paper.” 

One day Wanamaker was walking in a forest near Carls- 
bad when four men on horseback approached. He recog- 
nized Pulitzer in the center of the group. Let us continue 
the story in his own words: 


I knew his sight had gone and something moved me to get into the 
middle of the road, by which I halted the horses as they came toward me. 
I do not think that any one of the riders knew me except Mr. Pulitzer, 
who could not see me, but when I shouted to the little group fifty feet 
away: “Mr. Pulitzer of the New York World, halt!” To my great sur- 
prise the immediate reply came: “Wanamaker of Philadelphia, is that 
yout” 

Think of two men knowing each other and living three thousand 
miles apart, when Mr. Pulitzer was abroad and I was in America, and not 
seeing each other often, and one of them blind. The singular fact that 
Mr. Pulitzer had sight in his ears when he heard the sound of a voice 
is an illustration of the wonderful faculties that he had for people and 
things. It gives the key of the great bureau of talents that he possessed, 
which were concentrated upon and consecrated to the editorship and 
publication of a great journal. 

I have only to add that Mr. Pulitzer halted and introduced his secre- 
tary and his doctor and some other friend and begged me to get up on 
his horse, which I declined under the promise to take luncheon with him 
at the Koenig’s Villa that same day. We sat in the garden talking 
together for three hours. As I think of that morning as he talked of 
affairs in America, his plans for his future and interest in the questions 
of the day, the trees over our heads seemed to bloom and sparkle with 
new life and color because of his brilliant conversation and wonderful 
purposes yet to be accomplished. He was not only a magnificent talker, 
but he was one of the most determined doers I ever knew. It is a great 
thing to have known a man that lived up so well to standards and who 
never quit any work until his duty was done. 


166 JOHN WANAMAKER 


In the 1906 Carlsbad diary Wanamaker speaks of Pulit- 
zer a number of times. One entry follows: 


I took up this sheet to write at 4 o’clock and Mr. Pulitzer was 
announced with carriage to take me driving. ‘The wet morning and 
the succeeding dampness made it out of the question for me to drive, so 
I went down to be excused. ‘The poor, blind, shelved man Jet me off, 
but came up to this room piloted by Dr. Hosmer and they only left five 
minutes ago. 


During the few days in London that followed Carlsbad 
Wanamaker frequented the Carlton Club and the House 
of Commons; attended the Pilgrims’ dinner “with a very 
rare lot of Englishmen, Lord Roberts presiding”; and “had 
a lovely dinner with the Ambassador and Mrs. and Miss 
Reid. He got home only this afternoon and sent for me 
at once. Such a beautiful house it is that they are in.” 

One place mentioned in the diary this year, although so 
accessible from London, seems never to have been visited 
before: 


We have come in at 7:30 by way of Putney and Chelsea from the old 
Kew Gardens, and Palace of George III and his Queen Charlotte, the 
grandmother of Queen Victoria. How simple everything there looked 
compared with the gorgeousness of English royalty nowadays. How 
much sweeter and lovelier all simple things seem to me! 


He did not find it 


easy to leave London. Whitelaw Reid has a great reception next week 
and I am invited and urged hard to stay to speak on a platform with 
Balfour, but I came for rest and sunny air and not anything else but 
health-getting, so [ turn my back on it all and go off into the quiet. Iam 
ready to start at 11 for Paris ew route to Biarritz the last stage of my 


holiday. 


On the Calais boat at Dover, just before starting across, 
Wanamaker noted that “the English were kind, yet I do 
not like their Channel manners, either coming or going. It 


FO A 56 60-58 65 05 8 a 





Lonpvon House, 26 Patt MALL 





LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 167 


is as if the water were mixed with French capers and Eng- 
lish stubbornness.” 

If 1906 was a good year for Carlsbad, it was also a good 
year for Biarritz. At this period Wanamaker was inde- 
fatigable in recording his impressions. On June 10 there is 
a remarkable description of the “straw walled and thatched 
chapel with sand floors like the shore in Atlantic City” in 
the “Convent of Silences,” and the next day at Cambon he 
sat in the open air under the trees, after climbing for nearly 
three hours, and wrote: 

What a Paradise it is! I am overcome with the enthralling spirit that 
pervades the place. I do not see how Rostand could have written less 
fervently than he did from here. To sit all day feeding your eyes and 


saturating yourself with the odors of rose gardens and bathing in the 
Pyrenees pine air must intoxicate anyone. 


1907 and 1908 were tragical and critical years for John 
Wanamaker. How he rode the storm and how he faced 
the loss of his son and partner and his older partner, we 
have described elsewhere. He did not realize that he was 
soon going to be called upon to take the place of two of his 
three helpers, not only in the summer, as he wrote above, 
but for all the time. It was good fortune, then, that his 
months abroad in 1907 were in the summer instead of in 
the spring—a departure from the custom for some years 
past. He was better able to stand the strain that came so 
soon after the celebration in connection with the opening 
of the new building in New York in September of that 
year. 

He went over in July, and aside from two visits to Paris 
spent most of his two months at Ems and Biarritz. He 
motored from Paris to Ems, and describes in his diary cross- 
ing the frontier. 


We are only about half an hour out of Nancy. Already the frontier! 
Two soldiers and a civilian in white ducks, wearing a panama hat, get 


168 JOHN WANAMAKER 


their heads together, look us over, and finally stamp our passports. Just 
one mile further on we roll our blessed persons and chattels upon German 
territory. Here it takes much circumlocution. Here we have to sign 
papers, and pay money for indemnification of any victims our car might 
possibly hit. Then, having made that deposit, they charge us forty 
marks for a month’s license. 

These exceedingly practical German formalities having been gone 
through with and being now under the rule of the Kaiser, I am made 
to feel that the charm of the French country is behind us. Alas! It is 
now only amemory! For am I not now to hear German gutturals hence- 
forth? And to see the soberest people in the world—passing families 
that remind one of the Man of Wrath and Elizabeth and her April and 


June babies. 


And at Ems on July 23: 


I was in my room from luncheon until nearly 5, when I went out for 
my drink. ‘Then I hied me to the Kursaal, where divine music was 
being played to a large, quiet, unsmiling crowd of homely men and 
women. Their clothes! Even if I were not ashamed to try, I could 
never sell them. And yet this is fashion. ‘There was not a soul that I 
knew. ‘The only face I recognized was that of Kaiser Wilhelm I. He 
was stone cold to me! It is his grandson that I know. 


By his own count Wanamaker wrote over a thousand 
postcards at Ems that year, mostly to Bethany folks, almost 
equaling his Carlsbad record. In Paris he twice recorded 
Sundays at the American church on the rue de Berri, where 
his son Rodman’s family had long worshiped. Then he is 
once more at the Villa Duchatel. It was the first midsum- 
mer visit to Biarritz; and he had great pleasure in the con- 
stant company of two of his grandchildren. He records: 


I went off at 1 o’clock to St. John Pied du Porc to the festivities 
set out in the program within—King Edward VII. and his retinue of 
ladies went over in three autos and sat together in a special pavilion like 
unto a throne. The performances were out of doors in a court used for 
sport and the strange costumes of the Basques and their songs and dances 
were peculiar and interesting. 

On the way back to Biarritz we stopped—Mr. Pancoast and two 


LATER EUROPEAN HOLIDAYS 169 


children and myself—at Cambon for tea at 5:30 and found the King and 
his party the sole occupants of the Garden. We sat on a porch close 
by the party and the King and I bowed as I passed him. A Count in 
his party came over and spoke to me and to Brownie just before the 


King left. 


The retirement of Robert C. Ogden, the death of 
Thomas B. Wanamaker, the panic of 1907 and its after- 
math, the expansion of the business in New York, the 
problems of completing the building of the Philadelphia 
store, found Wanamaker able to do his greatest work at 
the age of seventy. Once more did he know that he was 
“absolutely indispensable” to the business. Europe had to 
go by the board for 1908. And even in February, 1909, 
when he had not been away for eighteen months, he 
recorded: 


I can ill afford the time just now when I have so much to arrange 
for others to take upon their shoulders and carry while I am away, but 
I am so thankful to be able to look forward with a cheery hope. It 
seems like an almost impossible thing to leave our two big businesses 
under the direction of one young man, and particularly this New York 
work, without any acknowledged general and only a few captains and 
corporals. 


But his son Rodman persuaded him to consider Biarritz 
again and the usual cure. Not the arguments he advanced 
about the father’s health, however, but the conviction the 
father had that the son could carry on for a while without 
him, made the elder Wanamaker yield. On February 15, 
1909, he wrote: 


An all-day procession through my office doors, arranging things so as 
not to come back here again before sailing. Leaving so much on the 
shoulders of R. W., one man, is a most serious thing. 

Instructions, powers of attorney, adjustments of many unsettled things, 
always existing in the course of business, coming along naturally, are 
easily arranged, but massed together because somebody goes away—makes 
a mountain of work to be climbed over. 


170 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Wanamaker sailed on the Cedric on February 20. Hav- 
ing promised to go to Biarritz and not to do things in Lon- 
don or Paris, there is little recorded of social events in the 
English and French capitals. Wanamaker was weary. He 
did not confess it, nor did he admit that he had aged by 
reason of years or because of the grilling experiences 
through which he had passed since the summer of 1907. 
But he wrote few letters, and the entries in the diary are 
shorter and less frequent. At Biarritz in March he met 
King Edward again. Mrs. Warburton was at the Villa 
Duchatel. He went to the Hotel d’Angleterre, “where 
I can have quiet when I want to be quiet,” as he put it. 
He devoted himself to his granddaughter, “Brownie.” He 
took Brownie and her little friends to 


Bayonne, where they had orangeade and sweet cakes while I took tea 
and toast. Then we walked among the queer little French shops and I 
bought some little things for them and brought them back happy. 
Brownie, who is not yet thirteen, comes here presently to dine with me 
downstairs in evening dress. ‘Think of that for the youngster! 

I met the Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia at the Villa Duchatel this 
morning. One sees plainly the affectionate regard she and my daughter 
have for each other. ‘The Duchess broached to me at once her great 
desire to have Mrs. W. remain longer. 


In 1910, when he was over for June and July, there was 
still little desire to write copiously about the things abroad. 
It was not until 1911 that Wanamaker was himself again 
and had the strength and zest to enjoy Europe thoroughly. 


CHAP THR ATE 


CORONATION EXPERIENCES 


HE Jubilee Year was marked by a memorable trip to 
Europe. With the preparations for the dedication of 
the new building in Philadelphia and the gala celebration of 
his fifty years in business not yet completed, the venerable 
merchant (he would never have applied that adjective to 
himself) was literally “hustled out of the country,” as he 
humorously put it. On March 29, he sailed on the Oceanic, 
accompanied only by a manservant. The excuse for going 
—he always had to have one—was the necessity of finding 
new offices in London, and he wanted to choose them him- 
self. But the temptations to which he succumbed were 
a month of spring at his son Rodman’s country estate, in 
Biarritz, Bellefontaine, and an invitation to attend the coro- 
nation of King George and Queen Mary. 

The family and his business chiefs in Philadelphia and 
New York were keen to have him go. They always felt 
what he never felt, that constant application to business 
might break down his health, none too good at the time. 
The strain of four strenuous years, with all the care and 
worries that he would not and the grief that he could not 
place on other shoulders, had begun to tell upon him. His 
physicians prescribed three months of complete change— 
they knew better than to say rest—before he was called 
upon to be the center of the Jubilee events that had been 
wisely postponed from April until later in the year. 

Positive instructions had been sent to the Wanamaker 
representatives in London that he was to be hustled out of 

171 


172 JOHN WANAMAKER 


England, too, and not allowed to take up the problem of 
the London offices until he had had a vacation tour in 
Europe. But he managed to crowd into a few days lunch- 
eons at the National Liberal Club, at the Mansion House, 
and at Ambassador Reid’s, and a dinner at the House of 
Commons. On his one Sunday he went to St. Paul’s in 
the morning and spoke in the evening at Dr. F. B. Meyer’s 
church. 

He was off to Boulogne on April 11, where a motor car 
met him for a tour through Normandy and Brittany, and 
then south to Biarritz, where he had several weeks with 
his family. 

Restless always and wanting to be on the go, he left 
Biarritz in the middle of May on an amazing motor flight 
to Germany in which he covered seven hundred and eighty- 
seven miles in three days. We have his itinerary, the 
strenuousness of which only those who have attempted a 
similar journey can realize. The first day he had lunch 
at Périgueux, spent two hours in the Haviland potteries at 
Limoges, and passed the night at the Hotel Moderne 
at Chateauroux. The second day he went via Bourges 
(where he sent several dozen postcards of the cathedral 
to friends) and Troyes (more postcards) to Chalons-sur- 
Marne, and spent the night at the Hotel de la Haute 
Meére de Dieu. The third day took him through Verdun 
and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to Ems, where on 
the evening of May 19 he received the first wireless mes- 
sage from the station on his New York store. 

One would be inclined to believe that no man could travel 
so fast and do anything else but travel. How could he see, 
much less take in, anything ew route? But this was not the 
case with John Wanamaker. A dozen times we have come 
across allusions in his speeches and Sunday-school talks and 
little editorials to things that he could only have seen dur- 


CORONATION EXPERIENCES 173 


ing those three days; for he never traveled that route before 
or after. And in a little package of envelopes, calling 
cards, hotel bills, postcards, circulars, and guide-books col- 
lected on that trip, which we found in his files, epigrams 
in lead pencil are jotted down. There were several news- 
papers, the reason for preserving which we did not realize 
until we saw sentences in his familiar hand all along the 
margins. This package was labeled, “For Bethany.” We 
give some of these epigrams to illustrate how the Sunday- 
school superintendent came by his terse and homely expres- 
sion of thoughts that used to make an abiding impression 
upon those who listened to him and which were the prelimi- 
nary practice of years for the editorials written during the 
last decade of his life. Taken at random are these: 


Sin comes in with a laugh and goes out with a cry. 

Easier to count twelve mountains than to climb one. 

Not easy to hobble a homesick pony. 

The white snow often covers deep rifts. 

What’s the good of a chest of gold if the devil keeps the key? 

Like a white mouse in a revolving cage, you can’t make the days go 
fast enough. 

A small promise kept is better than a big one forgotten. 

In the Holy Land of their innocent hearts. 

Her face one high moon of enjoyment. 


“After this escapade, I am going to be good and take a 
cure to fix me for London,” he wrote. So we follow him 
from Ems to the Hotel Alleesaal at Bad Langenschwal- 
bach. On June 28 he arrived in London again and wrote 
from the Carlton Hotel: 


I was driven from the station directly to the Mansion House, 
where I have been ever since, dining and talking, and I am just through 
with the manager here in arranging the canceling of my rooms, and am 
going back to stay with the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. I 
declined his invitation two or three times, but with the Lady Mayoress 
united in persuasion, I surrendered. 


174 JOHN WANAMAKER 


It was a fortunate acceptance of a most unusual invita- 
tion, for it enabled Wanamaker to be included in all the 
official functions of the Coronation week. On the very next 
morning he accompanied his hosts to the service of national 
thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral. On the back of the 
invitation of Dean Inge, which served as his card of admis- 
sion, he wrote: “St. Paul’s, Section J, close behind King 
George and the Queen in center of Nave and Transept, 
June 29, 1911, 10:50 a.m. J. W.” After the ceremony 
he was present at the luncheon given to the King and Queen 
by the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall, and sat next to his 
host when the King made the speech of thanks for the royal 
welcome accorded him." On that evening, after the Man- 
sion House dinner, he put down: 


I have left the guests of the evening dinner party on the columned 
portico, looking at the 100,000 people that in the last hour have passed 
along viewing the vast illuminations of the Mansion House, Royal 
Exchange, Bank of England, and other great buildings. ‘The crowds 
pack the streets from wall to wall, and your eyes cannot see to the end 
of the people, looking at them either way. I was at St. Paul’s for the 
morning, the Guildhall banguet until 3:30, and then here to afternoon 
tea, and afterward to our office and back to a dinner of about 24. 
To-morrow I go to the Crystal Palace, where the King meets 100,000 
children, and at night to Lord Strathcona’s dinner, Dominion Club 
probably. 


Both the Crystal Palace and the Strathcona dinner were 
notable events for Wanamaker. At the Crystal Palace the 
Lord Mayor presented him to the King and Queen. He 


wrote: 


The presentation took place at the throne prepared for the coronation 
celebration at the Crystal Palace, which I have known and loved so long. 


* Wanamaker commissioned an artist to paint the reception at the Guildhall, 
which was to be his gift to the city of London. It took over ten years to 
complete the canvas, and was not finished until the autumn of 1922, shortly 
before the donor’s death. It now hangs in the City Corporation art museum. 
See below, p. 462 and footnote. 


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CORONATION EXPERIENCES 175 


I did not realize that I was to be presented. And after the Lord Mayor 
had introduced me to King George, the King introduced me to his con- 
sort. In our brief conversation I was impressed with the King’s splendid 
common sense and with the Queen’s balance and capacity to act as the 
helpmate to a sovereign. The King seemed to know that I had been 
staying with the Lord Mayor. 


It was not a dinner given by Lord Strathcona that Wana- 
maker attended, but a much more important event. The 
Dominion Club was celebrating the Coronation at the Impe- 
rial Institute. Lord Strathcona was presiding, and he had 
invited the American merchant to sit at the table of honor. 
After his return home, Wanamaker told S. S. McClure: 

“Tt was more of a Canadian dinner than anything, for 
while princes and rajahs from India and other dignitaries 
were about representing all the empire, yet the whole trend 
of the dinner showed the vitality of Canada in a marvelous 
way. The room was full of electricity. I hardly expect to 
sit at a table again such as that. At Strathcona’s right was 
the Duke of Connaught, who is now Governor General of 
Canada. Next to him was the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
Sir Wilfred Laurier was on the other side of me. Then 
there was Cromer, famous in Egypt, Lord Minto, a pre- 
vious Governor General of Canada, Sir Joseph Ward of 
Australia and all that set of people. Strathcona was the 
commanding figure of it all. One might have called him 
the Gladstone of the hour.” * 

The evening in the midst of Canadians and Canada 
boosters bore fruit; for when he was interviewed on the 
steamer on his return to New York he had in his hand 
pamphlets about Canada, and gave them to the reporters, 
with the statement that Canada offered great opportunities 
to Americans. “They are already going there from the 


*When McClure commented that Strathcona had had “a most marvelous 
career—his years in Labrador—always buy and never sell,” Wanamaker 
quickly interpolated, “That wouldn’t do for a storekeeper, would it?” 


176 JOHN WANAMAKER 


South and from the West, and there is no longer any need 
to tell our young men to go west. They can go north. 
Canada is a great field for them.” 

Another lasting impression of the Dominion Club dinner, 
which remained with him to the end of his life and to which 
he often referred, was the sight of Lord Strathcona at the 
age of ninety-two, nearly twenty years his senior, presiding 
at a great dinner and making a speech. If the Canadian 
pioneer and financier could stay young for more than twenty 
years after his threescore-and-ten, could not Wanamaker 
look forward to many more years of active life? He had 
returned to London at the end of June, hardy and browned 
by his motor trips and walks at Biarritz and the Prussian 
baths. The thought of Strathcona made him more amen- 
able to the pleas of his family and the advice and warning 
of his doctors than he had been before. He said, laugh- 
ingly, “Isn’t it amazing for a fellow who has been more or 
less of a lame duck all his life to begin to feel that he ought 
to take a little care of himself only when he is seventy- 
three?” 

An intimate glimpse of life at the Mansion House is 
given in a letter written on Sunday morning: 


A large goose with a small goose quill begins this letter putting the ink 
on paper after the fashion of the ancient fathers who first lived in these 
old halls. And my hand will stretch out not to a blotter, but to the 
sand shaker. Breakfast is over, and the Bow Bells are ringing for church. 
We 3—the Lord Mayor and her Ladyship and myself—have a 15 minute 
walk together to church and under these gray clouds. 


And on Monday he wrote: 


Lunching with the Earl of Kintore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, 
Australia, and other notables such as the Earl Crawford, Lord this and 
Lord that. At noon to-day I went with the Bearer of the Mace and the 
Bearer of the Sword in their woolsacks and the Lord Mayor robed, in 
the State carriage, all gorgeous in gold, to a high function in the Guild- 


CORONATION EXPERIENCES 177 


hall, where the livery men, Aldermen, and Sheriffs in their costumes 
were gathered. Were I to stay here, from present appearances I would 
not have an idle moment for all July. Ambassador and Mrs. Reid’s 
invitation for a reception to-morrow has come. I can’t go, as there is a 
function here at the same hours. 


The American function to which he referred was the 
Fourth of July celebration. Wanamaker was not in Lon- 
don to celebrate American independence that year. He 
recorded that he “tramped around and taxicabbed all the 
morning of the Fourth with our London office men, 
looking at 9 different sets of rooms for offices. Then I 
dropped in at the Carlton Club, where I met Earl Roslyn, 
the Duchess of Sutherland’s brother. He looks like her.” 
In the afternoon there was another big Coronation recep- 
tion with “the Mansion House full all over,” and in the 
evening he went to his “big last Coronation dinner at the 
Fish Mongers’ Hall with the Lord Mayor.” 

One Coronation experience tended to strengthen his 
belief in the organ as the instrument of par excellence for 
use in a great building. Elaborate preparations had been 
made at St. Paul’s to offer to the King and Queen the best 
English music. A carefully selected orchestra had been 
long in training for the Coronation. The work of six 
British subjects was presented, beginning with Bridge’s tri- 
umphal march and ending with Elgar’s Coronation march, 
written for the occasion, conducted in each case by the com- 
poser. At its best English music lacks color and emotion 
when rendered by an orchestra. In huge St. Paul’s the 
strings were sometimes lost, the wood winds thinned out, 
and the drums echoed on the sustained rolls. Although he 
was in a receptive mood, and could generally be made 
enthusiastic as easily as a child, Wanamaker was deeply 
disappointed in the music. He said nothing of it, of course, 
to his hosts or other English friends. But he has left on 


178 JOHN WANAMAKER 


record that when they have another coronation, even if they 
go to Germany or France for their music, the British ought 
not to attempt an orchestra in St. Paul’s. “I think every 
piece that was rendered would have been so much better 
on the organ,” he wrote. 

In his first trips to Europe Wanamaker was faithful to 
the Cunard line, but he discovered in the 1890’s that the 
new German steamers were better run and had better food. 
So for years he traveled on the liners of the Hamburg- 
American and North German Lloyd. He was quick to go 
back to English ships, upon the recommendation of his 
buyers, when the White Star line, spurred on by German 
competition, offered a better service than her continental 
rivals. After Coronation week he returned to New York 
on the maiden voyage of the Olympic, celebrating his sev- 
enty-third birthday on board the day before landing. 

The hospitality he had received and the attention paid 
him in London had been most flattering. It tended to 
strengthen the conviction he had long cherished of com- 
munity of ideals and interests between the British Empire 
and the United States—an excellent preparation for the test 
that was soon to come. Wanamaker was an ardent believer 
in the world mission of the United States and in the possi- 
bility of an inclusive international understanding. It was 
about this time that he urged his fellow-countrymen to 
travel, and asked: 


Are not the peoples of the whole world drawing nearer together 
to-day in bonds of better understanding and in a disposition of good will 
to each other? Should not every American, traveling abroad, go pre- 
pared to represent in the best manner possible the fine spirit of the 
United States, in its good will and good wishes for all the peoples of 
every nation upon the earth? 


Years before he was signally honored in London, he had 
emphasized the peculiarly intimate relationship between his 


CORONATION EXPERIENCES 179 


country and Great Britain—a family relationship that 
brought us closer together, with our common language and 
blood, than we could ever hope to be with continental Euro- 
pean nations." At the Christian Endeavor Convention in 
Liverpool in 1899, at the end of his address, he had pro- 
voked wild enthusiasm by taking with each hand the folds 
of the American and British flags at the sides of the speak- 
ers’ stand, bringing them up before him, and kissing them. 
Three years later, after returning from his 1902 trip, he 
told his Bible Union: 


On the ship coming over at one of the evening entertainments slips 
were handed out with the words of “‘God save the King” on one side 
and ‘‘America” on the other. ‘The question was which to sing. Sing 
them together, was my suggestion; jumble them up; the countries are 
united. And the people did. It showed the state of the feeling. 


And the year before King George’s coronation, in his 
address to the delegates of the International Sunday-school 
Convention at Washington, Wanamaker declared that the 
ideals and culture of the English-speaking peoples were of 
prime importance and benefit to the whole world and that 
this was the reason for promoting all forms of Anglo- 
American co-operation in religious teaching. He concluded: 
“With our British brethren we cry, ‘God save the King,’ 
and our British delegates, brothers and sisters, are at one 
with us in shouting, ‘God save the children’! ” 

As he became interested in the international aspect of 
Y. M. C. A. and Sunday-school work, Wanamaker realized 
that his particular type of religious work and effort had 
support in other parts of the world only in English-speak- 
ing countries. British and American delegates or represen- 
tatives made up more than ninety per cent of the participants 
in so-called “world’s conventions” and “international” reli- 


*In a campaign speech in 1898 he said: “Though we sell goods made in 
almost every country on the globe, we have never found it necessary to 
employ any but English-speaking people.” 


180 JOHN WANAMAKER 


gious and semi-religious organizations. It was the same 
with the Salvation Army. Seeing that church affairs played 
a vital part in his life and occupied most of his time outside 
of business, it was natural that he should come to feel, as 
years went on, the unique affinity between the English- 
speaking peoples. Because he spoke no other language 
than English and was opposed to continental customs— 
especially the continental Sunday—his social contacts abroad 
were largely with Englishmen and Scotchmen, who under- 
stood—if they did not always actually share—his attitude 
and his prejudices. And although his firm did more busi- 
ness with the Continent than with Great Britain, the par- 
ticular lines offered by British manufacturers—such as men’s 
clothing and furnishings—were those through which he had 
risen to the front rank as a merchant and with which he was 
therefore most competent to deal. 

These facts kept him from feeling in any sense an out- 
sider when he was a guest at the Mansion House and a 
participant in the ceremonies and celebrations centered 
around the coronation of King George V. And while he 
was attending the Coronation, the occasion was celebrated 
in his new Philadelphia store. Before an immense gather- 
ing, at the very moment the ceremony started in Westmin- 
ster Abbey, the grand organ was first played. There was 
appropriate Coronation music, a display by the John Wana- 
maker Commercial Institute cadets of historic English flags, 
and a solemn salute to the Union Jack. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE GOLDEN JUBILEE 


E left Wanamaker, the business man, emerging vic- 
torious from the panic of 1907 and sounding 
almost alone the note of optimism in New York during 
the long and painful 1908 aftermath; and turned to coun- 
try life at Lindenhurst, his Masonic adventures, and later 
European holidays, culminating in the Coronation celebra- 
tion in London. Now we must go back and pick up the 
threads of his business life that lead to the Golden Jubilee. 
The panic was hardly over when the thought came to the 
seventy-year-old merchant that his active career as head 
of the great establishment ought to come toanend. In the 
early part of 1908 he put down in his diary: 


Certain and sure it is that we must get some strong helpers, else after 
reorganization now quite in my power to make I shall retire partially or 
entirely. I love work—love it—but I don’t think I should be bound up 
to the task that gives such little liberty for rest and recreation. I do not 
expect Mr. Ogden or T’. B. W. back again in the business. Neither of 
them seems to have the health. This leaves R. and myself. I am 
thinking hard how to arrange it and shall do so as soon as ever I can, 


This is the only passage in which a definite intention to 
retire is announced. Elsewhere we find only the occasional 
expression of the longing to be at other things—with all 
his time at his own disposal. Ever since his India experi- 
ence Wanamaker had wanted to travel in out-of-the-way 
corners of the world, to travel leisurely, with no thought 
of business calling him home. He dreamed; he planned— 
as we all do. His family and friends encouraged the 

181 


182 JOHN WANAMAKER 


thought of a trip round the world, and after that devotion 
to church work and public service. They felt that no man 
had better earned the right to do what he wanted to do. 

But what did he really want to do? Could a man of his 
temperament live happily and usefully “retired”? Experi- 
ence had taught him that every time he got away from 
business he wanted to get back. Every time he came back 
he said that he had been away too long, and he was 
supremely happy—the expression is not too strong—in put- 
ting on the harness again. In business he never felt old. 
Long after he was seventy he wrote: 


When I look back to the beginning, it does not seem a long time nor 
do I know how to make myself feel old. I think I am quite as young 
as | was twenty years ago; and | am sure that I have more capacity to do 
many things than I had when I was fifty. I have grown with my busi- 
ness, and the strength and power have been mine through God’s will 
as the business increased. No man is old when he is measuring up to 
opportunities. No man is old who welcomes responsibilities. 


It was not with the spirit of a martyr, resigned to doing 
an irksome duty, then, that John Wanamaker put away all 
thought of retiring when his son Thomas died, and started 
afresh on a new stage in his business life (more useful and 
more successful than any of the earlier stages) that was to 
last uninterruptedly for nearly fifteen years longer. In the 
son that remained he found joy and comfort—and some- 
thing to worry about. He recorded that his own health was 
perfect, and that he was needed because Rodman could not 
“be in two places at once—I must take the other place.” 
It is amusing and touching to see how father and son each 
thought that the other was overworking, and how each was 
inspired to do great things for the other’s sake. The son 
and his associates believed that John Wanamaker ought to 
take things easy. John Wanamaker, with the sense of loy- 
alty that was his dominant characteristic, believed that he 


THE GOLDEN JUBILEE 183 


could not desert his people. His conviction of their depen- 
dence upon him was his fountain of eternal youth. It was 
not an illusion, but a reality which was with him as long as 
he lived. 

As an illustration of the motive force that kept John 
Wanamaker working vigorously, fruitfully, and happily, 
what he wrote on July 7, 1908, is worth quoting: 


Now that all business is so perplexing in its failure to resume in sales 
and give me the usual receipts of cash, it will take me longer to do what 
I want before I am willing to put an ocean between me and the work 
here. I am standing over every detail in New York and supervising Phila- 


delphia. I shall not leave. 


And he did not leave. The son managed the business 
in Philadelphia. The father spent most of his time in 
New York, where he literally did what is written above. 
The elder Wanamaker’s interest in the Philadelphia store 
was for more than two years chiefly confined to the comple- 
tion of the new building. Wanamaker enjoyed his New 
York life intensely. There were the week-ends at Linden- 
hurst, of course, and the busy Sundays at Bethany; but for 
five days each week he lived at the Hotel Plaza, and became 
a familiar figure in Central Park, where he took his early 
morning walk. He knew the squirrels and the birds, and 
always exchanged greetings with early canterers on the 
bridle path. Central Park had not yet been spoiled by 
automobiles, and it reminded him of Lindenhurst. As 
nature was not associated with solitude in his mind—he 
loved people—he was able to write in Central Park: 


Thoughts are children of the mind and heart playing at home on the 
doors of our souls. Out of the sky they come, and up from the ground, 
to bless us. ‘The soft touch of the summer wind is a thoughtful kiss of 
health, and the long walk through the woods and the exercise of the body 
and the smell of the trees is a boon and benediction upon body and soul. 


184 JOHN WANAMAKER 


This silent hour with happy thoughts is a restorative without a doctor’s 
prescription. An early morning walk through Central Park is what some 
wise men take every morning before breakfast. 


Just as eagerly he went down to business, looking forward 
with zest to the day’s work because he had “‘a store that 
truly serves the people before it considers any other matter 
whatever,” and because he felt that “a breath of music 
with the chimes of the organ bells of our business house 
is also a good start for the day.” 

So completely did he find his place under the new condi- 
tions and so essential was the part he played in leading on 
the new path to prosperity during the years following the 
panic that we find him gleefully recording, in the bold free 
hand that his writing took when he was, as he put it, “bub- 
bling over”: 

I must say nobody is talking Europe to me just now. R. speaks about 
going away “somewhere.” The Mother urges 2 weeks at Hot Springs 
immediately to prepare for the winter work. Dr. Tyson says “wait a 


little and see how you get along.” So I am gladly on “the waiting 
bench.” 


And on another occasion, although he had been antici- 
pating a trip abroad, he confessed: 


Dear me, but I am reluctant to take the first decisive step to make 
preparations for going to a ship. There is so much here that I must 
see to. 


In the autumn of 1910, however, places were shifted. 
John Wanamaker returned to Philadelphia, and Rodman 
Wanamaker took up his residence in New York. The 
father had come home from Europe, and had noticed that 
the son was becoming more and more interested in New 
York. On the other hand, the last section of the new 
building in Philadelphia was ready to be opened, which 
meant the fulfillment of Wanamaker’s most cherished 


THE GOLDEN JUBILEE 185 


dream. It was fitting that he should preside in his own 
business temple. And he was worried over his wife’s 
health. He gave up his lease at the Plaza—with regret, 
as the diary shows, but without too much regret. It was 
always that way with Wanamaker. What was ahead of 
him fascinated him. ‘Throughout his life he was able to 
preserve the precious childlike quality of concentrating on 
the next thing and of enjoying the law of compensation 
without trying to analyze it. 

The next thing was the Golden Jubilee—the celebration 
of fifty years in business, coinciding with the completion of 
the new Philadelphia store. In preparation for the festivi- 
ties Wanamaker was urged to go away for a long time. 
The old project of a trip to Japan was revived. But 
although his wife’s health had improved (it was that con- 
sideration which made him abandon the Far East in 1910), 
he did not go. To himself he explained: “This store is 
too much like a new toy for me to think of leaving for 
so long.” In February he was a week-end guest of Presi- 
dent and Mrs. Taft at the White House, and attended the 
midwinter dinner of the Gridiron Club of which he wrote: 

At 7:30 the President and I went to the Gridiron dinner. The Club 
is composed of 40 newspapermen, and their 400 guests were Senators, 
Cabinet officers and Congressmen and officials of the departments. It 
was far away and above any Club or society dinner I ever attended and 
was better conducted by its chairman. I sat by Justice McKenna of the 
Supreme Court and next to him was Vice-President Sherman, who was 
next to the president of the Gridiron with Taft on his right. Part of 
the time I was seated between McKenna and Sherman, both of whem I 
knew well. I saw the few that were left of the men that were there in 
my time. It was after 12 when President Taft made the closing speech 


and we came back to the White House and talked for an hour. I am in 
the Lincoln Room, where we met for the Cabinet in Harrison’s time. 


Friends and employees in New York arranged a celebra- 
tion of the “half-century milestone” on March 1, 1911. 


186 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Letters and telegrams came in, and Wanamaker received the 
congratulations “in the dressed-up store of dressed-up peo- 
ple, smiling and speaking their pride in my old age.” To 
his son Rodman, who was in Philadelphia that day, he 


wrote: 


I find my office embellished with a huge horseshoe of daffodils. I am 
told the store is decorated throughout. After I finish my mail, I shall 
make a tour. The day is bright and memories of fifty years are crowding 
upon me. 

I see again the first morning when I swept the shavings and blocks 
that were about the front door, before the doors were opened on that 
12th day of March, 1877. And the procession of the years before that, 
beginning at Oak Hall with its little square box of a store, and that old 
cash book which you saw on Monday and which I kept myself and the 
subsequent years of happy labor and continual enjoyment; your brother 
Thomas coming into the business and beginning in the basement taking 
off the lids of boxes of merchandise and checking up the bills; your own 
coming after your graduation and early marriage; the rapid extensions of 
the old Grand Depot building into its splendid form. It was splendid. 
We built a business without a proper home! ‘Then the establishment of 
our offices in Paris and your own large part in that work; the years of 
study for the new building which we have just completed; and the steps 
along the way in our New York branch; and the splendid equipment in 
both cities for still larger things. 

All these things fill me not only with wonder, but with great thanks- 
giving that I have been permitted to toil so long and that I was enabled 
to trust that wisdom might be wrought into the foundations for something 
to remain when my years are over. ‘The largest thing in my eyes and 
heart this morning is the sense of the goodness of the Heavenly Father 
to have permitted me to live to see so much of His hand of love toward 
me in the things that are surrounding me to-day. 


A fortnight later the Philadelphia store celebrated. On 
March 14, 1911, the diary says: 


Yesterday was the most wonderful of all the days in the old store. 
The people showed more of their heart to me than ever before. 880 of 
the Phila. staff sat down to breakfast at 5 minutes of 8—the Boy Cadets 
350 strong escorted by their Military Band of 40 and the Girls’ Bugle 





188 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Corps flanked the tables. As we took our places the organ chimes pealed. 
The short breakfast was beautifully served—then came speeches. The 
Cadet Color Guard presented the Jubilee Silk Flag. We were through 
at 9:30 and all wore our Sunday clothes. I went about a little. There 
were too many callers for me to stay on the floor. 


These were in the nature of preliminary celebrations—to 
mark the anniversary month—which was always held in 
March. Wanamaker went abroad in the spring. His 
experiences at the coronation of King George we have 
already given. When he returned in midsummer, the great 
organ, which he had bought seven years before at the 
St. Louis Exposition, was installed in the Grand Court of 
the Philadelphia building, and he heard it for the first 
time.” To adjust the business to the new facilities afforded 
by greatly increased space in Philadelphia put all thought 
of a more formal celebration of the jubilee and of the dedi- 
cation of the Philadelphia store out of his mind for the 
time being. And he wanted to wait until all his people 
had returned from their vacations. There was still some 
anxiety, also, as to business conditions. We remember that 
in 1907 the panic came just after the opening of the new 
building in New York, and that there had not been a return 
to normal economic life since then. On August 22, 1911, 
Wanamaker wrote: 


Business generally is very lifeless and the certainty of a revision of 
the tariff by the next Congress meeting first of December will unsettle 
manufacturers, merchants and consumers. America for the last few years 
has kept in an upset condition from panic, trust, corporation and tariff fits, 


It was not that the business was falling off. On the con- 
trary, both stores were doing well. But the burnt child 
dreaded the fire. Just as he had given the New York 
store In 1907 stocks worthy of its new and larger home, he 


was intent upon making the jubilee year Christmas season 
* See below, p. 215. 


THE GOLDEN JUBILEE 189 


in Philadelphia one that would be noteworthy above all for 
the merchandise offered. The great home he had built for 
his business added to his opportunities—but it also added to 
his responsibilities. When the winter business plans were 
completed, and not until then, was he ready for a festival 
in honor of the fiftieth anniversary. 

The store celebration was held on the evening of Octo- 
ber 26, 1911, when six thousand five hundred employees 
marched through the Grand Court before the reviewing 
stand. ‘There was a pageant whose exhibits were symbolic of 
the history of the store and city. It was exclusively a family 
affair. ‘The public was not admitted. But the children 
and grandchildren of John Wanamaker were present, and a 
special train brought a representative group from the New 
York store, with the Seventh Regiment Band. 

The marching song was “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” 
which did not seem in any way incongruous to the man 
who was being honored. He had always regarded his busi- 
ness as an expression of his religion. He did not divorce 
the two in thought or action; and he said so, giving his 
reason. To him a man’s religion was his life. Business 
or whatever activity one engaged in was simply an oppor- 
tunity for Christian living. 

With this thought in mind, when he accepted as a jubilee 
gift of his store family a deed to the land on which his 
birthplace stood, the idea came to him instantly to use it 
for some charitable purpose. And when the Jubilee Book, 
with the signatures of thirteen thousand employees at home 
and abroad, was presented to him, he said that he bore on 
his heart above all things connected with the business the 
welfare and well-being of all who worked with him “in the 
service of the public.” 

In the spring of 1911 the Dry Goods Economist gave 
a gold medal to Wanamaker in recognition of his unique 


190 JOHN WANAMAKER 


services to retail merchandising during fifty years.’ If he 
appreciated any event of the jubilee year, outside the testi- 
monials of his own people, it was the luncheon of New York 
merchants in honor of his jubilee on November 16, 1911, 
when the proprietors and managers of other general stores 
in the city presented him with a loving cup. Competition 
among the larger merchants in New York was keen; but 
they all recognized that Wanamaker had rendered unique 
service in setting high standards of business dealing, in 
his pioneering in advertising and merchandising, and, above 
all, by raising in public esteem the calling of the mer- 
chant through his own worth and personality. Respond- 
ing to the greetings of his fellow-merchants, Wanamaker 
expressed the belief that fraternity and not rivalry was 
the spirit in New York; made a plea for the reduction of 
telegraph, cable, and express charges and for the estab- 
lishment of the parcels post;* and declared that merchants 
should study “how to reduce the high cost of living.” In 
emphasizing this last point he heralded the economic prob- 
lem that was coming to the front and created the slogan 
for the next decade in economics as he did the following 
year in politics when, in seconding the renomination of 
Taft, he spoke of “safeguarding the Constitution.” 

During the jubilee year Wanamaker wrote much about 
his experiences abroad, as we have seen, and made many 
speeches in the various celebrations in Philadelphia and 
New York, in which he reviewed the fifty years in graphic 
detail. Of his reminiscences we have made use in many 


* The face of this medal, designed by Frank C. Higgins, president of the 
New York Numismatic Society, showed Mercury, god of commerce; the 
reverse carried five medallions, representing progress, originality, thought, 
talent, and energy. In presenting the medal, Mr. A. C. Pearson said: 
“Mr. Wanamaker has infused his spirit into the active operations of his 
business as has perhaps no other man. ‘There is not a counter in the store 
or an advertisement in a paper that is not permeated with his ideas and 
individuality.” 

* See above, vol. i, pp. 280-292. 





(Photo. by Diihrkoop) 


In New York IN IgI2 





THE GOLDEN JUBILEE I9I 


places in our story of Wanamaker’s life. But he was singu- 
larly reticent, for a man of his years, in expressing publicly 
or in his intimate writings how the recognition of his 
achievements—and the achievements themselves—made 
him feel. He came nearest to revealing his thoughts in 
the letter to his son from which we have quoted above. 
But we find two indications that give us a clue as to the 
attitude of the man of seventy-three, still in the full vigor 
of life and floodtide of success. On the jubilee year birth- 
day, July 11, 1911, when he was returning from Europe 
to receive the honors awaiting him and to enter into the 
possession of the completed Philadelphia store, there are 
eight words only on the page: “Not unto us, O Lord, not 
unto us.” 

And on Christmas Eve, just a week before the President 
of the United States was coming to bring him the congratu- 
lations of the nation and to dedicate the new store, he wrote 
that he was standing in the Grand Court, crowded with 
belated shoppers, listening to the Christmas carols. He 
described the feeling that came over him when they sang, 
“Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem,” which was written by 
his old friend Phillips Brooks. “I said to myself that I 
was in a temple—but may I never say, ‘I built it?!” 

Confronted with the fulfillment of his dreams, the over- 
whelming sensation was that of humility. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE NEW HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA 
STORE 


N conversations with visitors of all kinds about all sorts 
of things during the years immediately following the 
completion of the new Philadelphia store, Wanamaker 
never failed to mention safety from fire as the outstanding 
feature of the building. In August, 1914, for instance, we 
find him saying: 

You are now on the eighth floor of this store, and if a fire were to 
break out, you would be a great deal safer than on the first floor. I can 
take you in half a minute into a brick tower that starts from the rock 
foundation and goes to the roof, with staircases and story floors of 
solid stone. Fifteen thousand people can keep moving down in each 
one of those towers that you can’t go on this floor to any place without 


being in one minute’s reach of. ‘The towers are smoke proof, and there 
is no need of crowding or pushing anywhere at any time. 


The recurrence of this topic indicates the relief Wana- 
maker felt at being free from the fear of a holocaust in 
the haphazard group of buildings that had been his Phila- 
delphia store. Knowing that a fire in the daytime might 
entail loss of life among shoppers and employees, he had 
devoted himself, from the first days of the expansion of 
the Grand Depot, to the study of fire-prevention appli- 
ances. He had always been ready to listen to any proposi- 
tion to make his building safer, and he had gone out of his 
way to investigate inventions he had read or heard about 
and new devices that he saw advertised. His employees 
had thorough instruction in fire drills. His people had fig- 


192 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 193 


ured out that while fire was always possible, a calamity 
resulting from it could not happen. He accepted expert 
opinion, of course, because there was nothing else to do; 
but he was never comfortable in his mind about the matter. 

When he began to do business in the Stewart building 
in New York, the desire to have a new building in Phila- 
delphia was increased. A few months later came the great 
Philadelphia fire of 1897, which started opposite Wana- 
maker’s and consumed a great many buildings on Market 
Street. It spread to the clock tower corner of the Wana- 
maker store before it was checked. The fire had occurred 
in the early morning. Wanamaker was assured that there 
would have been no panic had it broken out in shopping 
hours. But a recent horrible panic after a fire in Paris, 
which had shocked the whole world, was in his mind. 
He decided to build a fireproof structure covering the whole 
block.» The problems to be faced and solved were tre- 
mendous. It was going to take years to plan, and more 
years to erect, a new store. The Philadelphia merchant 
had recently entered the New York field; he was still an 
active factor in politics; and in his business he was con- 
fronted by administrative and merchandising problems that 
challenged the best that was in him. The idea of one great 
building had to take form slowly. 

It was not a new idea. We find in the Public Ledger 
of May 20, 1885: 

*He put down as the first of the nine things he had in mind in the 
proposed new building: “To insure safety for all comers so far as human 
power avails.” His responsibility for the well-being and safety of every 
person under the Wanamaker roof was a fact he impressed upon architects, 
builders, and his own people throughout the ten years. When the building 
was dedicated he gave as reason for his belief that “not another such mer- 
cantile building exists to-day anywhere in the world,” and that “the dream 
of its founder and his sons is fulfilled,” this fact, which he put first: ‘“Sani- 


tary appointments and safeguards from fire or disaster have been most care- 
fully provided for as far as is humanly possible.” 


194 JOHN WANAMAKER 


At present it is the intention of Mr. John Wanamaker to alter the 
buildings he has acquired for the purposes of his business, according to 
the general plan adopted with the houses on the Chestnut Street front. 
Eventually it is expected that a new and grand building will cover the 
whole lot, of an architectural style suitable for an establishment of such 


magnitude. 


Harrison’s call upon Wanamaker for national service 
took four years; and then Pennsylvania politics and expan- 
sions in New York came along. But after he returned 
from Washington in 1893, the father had been told by his 
son Thomas that the greatest thing he could do for the busi- 
ness would be to work out a plan for an adequate building 
unit, which could be erected in sections, so as to prevent 
interruption in the business and at the same time make 
financing easier. The elder Wanamaker left no doubt in 
his son’s mind that he was ready to go ahead with the build- 
ing of the new store as soon as the engineering difficulties 
that seemed to stand in the way of tall buildings were 
solved. ‘The structural steel and concrete industries were 
still in the experimental stage. 

So accustomed are we to the present-day aspect of Ameri- 
can cities, with their skyscrapers, that it is not easy to put 
ourselves back thirty years. In the spring of 1893, after 
he had returned to private life, Wanamaker took a long trip 
through the West. Studying store buildings was on his 
mind. This we know from his notes and letters. He was 
especially interested in what Chicago was doing in office 
buildings and hotels as well as in stores; and at the World’s 
Fair he was attracted by architectural exhibits of Budapest 
and Buenos Aires, where larger permanent public structures 
for municipal use were being planned than then existed in 
any city in the United States. In visiting the principal 
cities of our own country he had found no building any- 
where that could be used as a model—or could furnish 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 195 


an idea—for the Wanamaker store. The only store build- 
ing that combined space and utility with elegance was the 
A. T. Stewart building in New York, which Wanamaker 
himself bought three years later. 

In writing of the conception and execution of Wana- 
maker’s plan to house the greatest retail business in America 
in an adequate building under one roof, we must bear in 
mind the fact that there was no precedent. When Wana- 
maker was casting about for a solution of his problem, the 
type of great building which is the commonplace of Ameri- 
can city life to-day was not yet regarded as practicable and 
feasible by structural engineers. Nothing like the floor 
space he had in mind was provided by any building. No 
one had blue-printed the elevator system of which he 
dreamed. The plan he decided upon and carried to frui- 
tion after a continuous struggle of nine years was as great 
a pioneering feat as any that he ever attempted.’ In steel 
and stone he erected an enduring witness to the qualities 
that made him great. It reflects his will, his taste, his sense 
of values and proportion, his genius for display, his idea of 
what constitutes quality, and his craving for ight. The 
building itself we shall not attempt to describe. That has 
no place in the biography. It is enough to say that it is a 
monument worthy of the man. But how he built it, dur- 
ing the years that were his most notable years as a merchant 
and a man, is of vital interest. 

That grown-ups are still children is shown by our matter- 
of-fact acceptance of what we use and enjoy. We walk 
into great stores and other buildings that are towering bee- 


*The proof of this statement is not difficult to adduce. We have the 
store that Marshall Field built (he consulted the same architect) at the very 
time John Wanamaker was starting his building. The Field store is cut up 
into three separate units, under three roofs. ‘The idea of having a single 
building had been under consideration—and was abandoned—by Field, 
because of technical difficulties and the uncertain expense, in 1902, just when 
Wanamaker was about to break ground for his new store. 


196 JOHN WANAMAKER 


hives, looking upon what they give us in comfort and 
sesthetic satisfaction as things we have always had. We do 
not wonder how we got along before we had them, nor do 
we think to pay the tribute that is due to the master minds 
and the thousands of hands that toiled to bestow on us so 
great a benefit. Accustomed as we are to things as they 
are, we do not go back to other days. Thus are we insensi- 
ble to change. Thus have we a narrow and grotesque idea 
of achievement. : 

The old Wanamaker store was bizarre to look upon. Its 
Chestnut Street frontage, creation of expediency, did not 
look queer and ugly only because it harmonized with the 
other blocks and buildings on Chestnut Street. For this 
reason—that it was the same everywhere else—the thousand 
and one inconveniences to employees and shoppers are incon- 
veniences only in retrospect. Everybody thought Wana- 
maker’s was wonderful because it was ahead of its day. 
Withal, the old store had its undeniable cachet. Because 
it had grown and evolved gradually, there was nothing 
monotonous about the place. It was full of charming nooks. 
There was intimacy in the aspect of every department. For 
rugs, bric-a-brac, pictures, and furniture, the atmosphere 
was just right. 

The owner’s first problem we might call one of transmi- 
gration of the soul. He had founded the store. He had 
watered as well as planted. And now, when he proposed 
to do away with the old body, he had to think how the 
personality of the business—so wholly himself—that per- 
meated the ever-changing buildings could be transferred 
from wood and plaster to steel and concrete. He wanted 
high ceilings for ventilation and light. He wanted vast 
floor space to meet the demands of a business that had 
grown beyond his dreams. He wanted exits and safety 
stairways and great doors, such as he had seen on the latest 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 197 


transatlantic liners, that would shut off instantly a threat- 
ened part of the new building. No matter how high he 
decided to build, he wanted light from above coming down 
through a central well that would bring the sun into the 
heart of the store. 

But if low ceilings, different levels, rambling aisles, and 
passerelles were done away with, what would happen to the 
intimacy, the nothing-like-it-anywhere-elseness, the spe- 
cialty shop look of Wanamaker’s? The answer was obvious. 
The greatest care was going to be required to make the new 
building express the founder. Of the technical problems 
confronting the architect and builder Wanamaker could 
hope to understand little; but he had so to arrange for the 
new building that from foundation to capstone it would 
express John Wanamaker. This would mean his personal 
supervision of the planning and building. 

The second problem would be how to keep the business 
going and growing during the long years of building, and 
how to do it without serious inconvenience to the every-day 
life of Philadelphia. The business needed all the space 
there was; and the Wanamaker block now stood at the heart 
of Philadelphia, with none too wide streets around it. The 
quintupled value of the land was not, as some ignorantly 
assumed, an unearned increment to its owner. Taxes had 
steadily increased to the point where the overhead conse- 
quent upon ownership of the block had itself come to be a 
serious charge upon the cost of doing business. To the 
expense of construction had to be added carrying for suc- 
cessive periods of years quarter-sections of the Wanamaker 
block temporarily withdrawn from use. A resulting con- 
gestion in the rest of the premises and the long-continued 
annoyance to shoppers and hindrance to the delivery service 
were a risk not lightly to be incurred. If at any time 
during the operation there were labor difficulties or dearth 


198 JOHN WANAMAKER 


of building material, if the hundreds of sub-contractors 
should fail to do their part, the loss to the man who had 
initiated so daring a venture might prove stupendous. 
Nothing like it had ever been attempted in Philadelphia. 
Of precedents to figure by there were none. On the other 
hand, there were unknown imponderabilia to reckon with. 

But Wanamaker knew that a new building, to banish for- 
ever the fear of fire and to expand in, had to come. ‘The 
principles that had made him pre-eminent among American 
merchants rendered imperative, sooner or later, a new Wan- 
amaker’s. Obstacles had to be overcome, no matter what 
they were. A way had to be found to do what must be 
done. Without expansion, stagnation was inevitable. The 
only way to expand was to rebuild from foundation up. 
The existing structure had reached the limit of its capacity. 
Then, too, Wanamaker sensed, with that uncanny presci- 
ence of his, the architectural transformation of great cities, 
where increasing land values would soon take the profit out 
of business unless steel and concrete and modern engineer- 
ing came to the aid of the owner of the land. Others 
would be building in the heart of the city, forced to it, 
and a way had to be found to build enormous structures 
without interrupting the normal life of the community. A 
way had to be found! In his planning, in his figuring, 
in his dreaming, he did not ask himself, “Shall I do it or 
shall I not?” There was only one question, “How?” 

The third problem was that of financing the project. 
The records do not show that this worried Wanamaker. 
He used to say laughingly that he never did worry about 
money even when he “ought to have.” The biographer 
does not find the statement an exaggeration. Perhaps the 
great things Wanamaker accomplished are due more to his 
conviction that if he went ahead the means of doing so 
would be found than to any other cause. He had his life- 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 199 


insurance policies—an asset that had been accumulating for 
thirty years. He could mortgage his land. If more money 
were needed, a bond issue could be floated.* And his credit 
was of the kind that he had every reason to believe would 
not be strained to the breaking point by the most ambitious 
building enterprise. 

In 1899, the year of his North Cape cruise, Wanamaker 
went to Paris and Berlin to study the new establishments 
of the Printemps and Tietz. He gathered several pictures 
of these buildings and also of the Ménagére in Paris; and 
with them he filed his notes and impressions. He had 
ideas that had been bubbling up inside for years, some sug- 
gested by things he had seen elsewhere, others wholly 
novel. The impracticable he set aside in the process of 
elimination. But what he thought ought to be done and 
could be done he did not easily give up or modify. He 
had to be shown that suggestions were inadvisable. Before 
he yielded, he had to see that they were too expensive 
or would not accomplish what he had in mind or were 
materially impossible of execution. For a layman he was 
extraordinarily quick at reading a sketch and at getting 
the idea of a drawing. He knew how to take a pencil 
and put down in lines what he wished to convey. 

Consequently, when the preliminary plans were being 
made for the new kind of store building to follow, after 
thirty years, the new kind of store, Wanamaker did not get 


* The idea of bonds, however, was not an agreeable one. While for any 
large mortgage, distribution of the amount through mortgage bonds was the 
natural method of financing, Wanamaker had a curious feeling that bond- 
holders regarded themselves as investors in—and therefore partners in the 
ownership of—the enterprise they had underwritten. Before the building 
was completed he did avail himself of a large mortgage bond issue. But 
Wanamaker never did bond his business for operating capital, unlike most 
of his competitors; and after the business was incorporated he kept all except 
qualifying shares of stock in his own and his son’s name. His pride of own- 
ership was tremendous, and when he put the capstone on the Philadelphia 
building he said in his address that the business was owned wholly by himself 
and his son Rodman. 


200 JOHN WANAMAKER 


up a competition or ask a lot of architects to submit their 
ideas in toto. About his building he was with the architects 
as he had always been with dealers about paintings. He 
did not go to them for advice as to what he ought to like. 
The type and size of building, the materials used, the 
interior arrangement, the adornments—about. all these 
questions he had made up his mind. Even in matters of 
detail it was not often that he was asked to accept or reject 
the ideas and tastes of others. He did the suggesting. It 
was for the architects and engineers to carry them out if at 
all practicable. When he was in doubt, he did not hesitate 
to ask for opinions. When he felt he did not know, he 
sought information and advice before he disclosed what 
was in his mind. Through all the years of the great under- 
taking it was he who planned and built the store that is his 
monument. 

By a diligent study of the correspondence we believe that 
we have established a fact that will surprise most people. 
One assumes that the Philadelphia Wanamaker store is a 
conception that sprang fully matured and elaborated out 
of the mind of the master builder and his assistants, or 
that it was constructed according to the plans of Burnham, 
the Chicago architect. It is so convincingly a unit that one 
feels it must have been built that way. But it was not. 
Great achievements are never begun and completed in accord- 
ance with prearranged plans. One can imitate or copy 
what already exists. An original creation takes form grad- 
ually in travail. The great things done by John Wana- 
maker needed the spur and inspiration of going along the 
path of performance, surmounting obstacles, before the goal 
came into view. John Wanamaker could be counted on to 
see a project through, no matter what it was, and with suc- 
cess that was often in proportion to the obstacles overcome. 

One doubts, however, whether the veteran merchant— 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 201 


he was already that in 1902—realized the difficulties ahead 
of him. He certainly never believed that more than two 
years would pass before the first steel pillar was put in 
place and that the Chestnut Street doors of the new build- 
ing would not be opened until the ninth year. 

For precaution against fire, for greater cleanliness, and 
to make possible devoting two stories under the ground 
wholly to selling space, Wanamaker decided, long before 
he passed on the outward appearance and interior arrange- 
ment of the new building, that the power plant should be in 
the adjoining block. Land was purchased in the center of 
the block east of Thirteenth Street, and in October, 1901, 
the Philadelphia Councils passed an ordinance authorizing 
a tunnel under Thirteenth Street to the projected power 
house. This structure went up separately from the Store 
building. After all these years it remains a model of what 
a heating and lighting plant for a twentieth-century build- 
ing should be. 

Wanamaker knew that the practicability of the great 
building for retail merchandising depended largely upon the 
solution of problems connected with the power house. He 
had anticipated every conceivable kind of need and provided 
accordingly. When he pressed the button to start the great 
dynamos, linked up to enough miles of wiring to encircle 
the globe, he recalled the period of his experience in electric 
light and ventilation less than thirty years before, and 
spoke humourously of how friends who came to his office 
when the Grand Depot was first made over were impressed 
with his steam heat, even though it worked only fitfully. 
“That heating was like my lighting. When it was being 
praised and when I was told that it was a miracle, I was 
all the time afraid that it would suddenly die out. Some- 
times it did!” 


202 JOHN WANAMAKER 


The chronology of the undertaking is in itself eloquent: 


1902—Ground broken for Market Street section 

1903—Making plans while excavation continued 

1904-—Framework and masonry of Market Street section begun 

1905—First section finished; excavations for second section started 

1906—Market Street section opened 

1907—Framework and masonry of second section 

1908—Second section completed; excavation for third section started 

1909—Second section opened; laying of corner stone, framework and 
masonry of Chestnut Street section | 

1910—Chestnut Street section completed, and Chestnut Street doors 
opened in time for Christmas 

1911—Interior completed; and dedication on December 30 


But more eloquent is what we read between the lines— 
the long story of hope deferred that did not make the 
heart sick; for nothing could take away John Wanamaker’s 
confidence and buoyant optimism. During the period of 
the construction of the Philadelphia store Wanamaker put 
up his new store in New York; he rode the storm of the 
panic of 1907; and he lost Ogden and his son Thomas. 
And there were never lacking friends to tell him that he 
shouldn’t and couldn’t do what he did. 

He was on his way home from India when the first spade 
of earth was turned on Washington’s birthday, 1902. On 
his arrival in Paris he found a letter from Thomas B., who 
wrote: 


I wish you were taking a good cure somewhere and I hope you will 
before you come back. After you are here three days and a Sunday you 
will feel as if you had never been away. 


But home the father came and got right into the midst 
of the planning. He resisted the pressure—and powerful 
it was—brought upon him to engage a Philadelphia archi- 
tect. He believed that there was one man who had the 
experience and the vision to help him. Daniel H. Burn- 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 203 


ham had built the first skyscraper and fireproof building 
in the United States in Chicago." It was only ten stories 
high—not as tall as the Ames Building in Boston or the 
World Building in New York. And it had soon been out- 
distanced by a number of tall structures in half a dozen 
American cities. But the reputation of Burnham as past 
master in the new art of using steel framework with walls 
of solid stone on concrete foundations did not suffer by 
the success of his imitators. Wanamaker had first admired 
his work at the World’s Fair of 1893, and he knew that 
Burnham had been retained for Marshall Field’s new store. 
Philadelphia local pride, and the “strong representations” 
(as he called them) of Philadelphia and New York friends 
did not prevent him from going to Chicago for his archi- 
tect. 

Characteristic of both men was the way the plans for the 
new store were launched. On September 23, 1902, Wana- 
maker climbed down from his sleeper at Chicago, and went 
to Burnham’s club for breakfast. The two men visited the 
Art Institute, and Burnham was busy all the time answer- 
ing Wanamaker’s questions. “Then Wanamaker told Burn- 
ham that he was ready to start building as soon as the plans 
could be agreed upon and the contracts let. Nothing would 
do but that Burnham should accompany him to Philadelphia 
that very day. The next morning Wanamaker had the 
architect of his choice on the spot, looking over the ground 
at City Hall Square and Market Street. Sufficient exca- 
vating had already been done to allow Burnham to study 


* Burnham was six years younger than Wanamaker, and he had been a 
rolling stone until the Chicago fire of 1871 gave him his opportunity. 
He had failed entrance examinations at both Harvard and Yale, had tried 
mercantile business without success, and had come back to Chicago from 
gold-seeking in Nevada without any money in his pocket. But when Wana- 
maker consulted him he had behind him thirty years of conspicuous success 
in the architectural profession—success of the kind that appealed to Wana- 
maker, because it had been won by originality and daring. Burnham’s 
pioneering spirit made him the father of the twentieth-century American city. 


204. JOHN WANAMAKER 


the subsoil. He declared that the store could be built in 
granite, and recommended Maine stone. Wanamaker 
pressed a button, and in a minute a report on the quality 
and capacity of all the Maine quarries was in the hands of 
the surprised Burnham. Wanamaker had had it prepared 
more than two years before.” It was decided to build in 
granite; Wanamaker indicated what he wanted; and Burn- 
ham returned to Chicago with the order to “rush the draw- 
ings.” After seven weeks he returned with the plans. We 
take from Burnham’s 1902 diary two quotations: 


November 18—Burnham, Graham, Anderson, and Wanamaker staff 
men all day at Wanamaker’s. Wanamaker came in before lunch and 
accepted the work, elevation, and plans of lower part, except as to sec- 
tions showing the sub-basement, basement, and basement entresol heights. 
Burnham and Graham lunched with Wanamaker in his private lunch 
room. Young Wanamaker joined them at lunch. No conversation 
occurred at lunch regarding details of the building. Young Wanamaker 
said to his father: “You do the merchandising and I will do the building; 
otherwise I want nothing to do with it.” This was the only reference 
made to the work in his presence. In the afternoon, the sections of 
basement were made, submitted to Mr. Wanamaker by Graham, and 
approved of by Mr. Wanamaker. November 27—Burnham, Ernest Gra- 
ham, and Pierce Anderson went to Wanamaker’s construction department 
ofice. Mr. Wanamaker accepted the exterior (Florentine style) with the 
exception of proposed Chestnut Street doorway, which Burnham was to 
change. He also accepted the plan, with some slight changes around rear 
of carriage entrance, said changes to be made that night. 


*It developed after the first section was completed, however, that either 
the contract for the granite had been let without careful inspection, or that 
deliveries had been passed without adequate testing. The ensuing dispute 
called for the services of a chemist as referee, and led Wanamaker to send 
a specialist again to investigate the Maine quarries. The granite was tested 
on the spot for endurance and color of stone. The difficulty all along 
through the building of the Philadelphia store seemed to be to get enough of 
the quality needed. In the Gould report, December, 1905, it is stated that a 
former foreman of the quarry Wanamaker was thinking of using had 
declared that “it will be impossible to get out enough good clear granite 
to furnish the Wanamaker building requirements,” which, added, Mr. Gould, 
was “an opinion held by several of the workmen who are equally familiar 
with the possibilities of this quarry.” 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 205 


It is evident that the plans did not work out as rapidly 
and satisfactorily as Wanamaker anticipated. Excavating 
was slow and costly. Contract bids, once the original speci- 
fications were ready, proved in some cases unexpectedly 
high, and there were some work and materials that none 
would offer to provide within the time limit or in the way 
the Wanamaker construction department had it worked out. 
In the files we discovered a booklet, filled from cover to 
cover with notes in Wanamaker’s own hand, which is a 
striking revelation of the man’s mind. Dated in Chicago, 
on September 21, 1903, its entries prove that he had gone 
out there to talk over the plans for the store and to try to 
speed up the work. They prove, too, that the tentative 
plans submitted by Burnham a year before had not been 
definitive and that in many particulars they still had to be 
changed to embrace ideas to which Wanamaker held tena- 
ciously. Illustrative of the way his mind worked are the 
epigrams, the comments on the Marshall Field store and 
policy, and the ever-present question of comfort of his 
employees, interspersed on almost every page. We shall 
attempt to condense what is in this booklet: 

No one was doing all he could. The building must stand for sim- 
plicity, strength, straightforwardness—for “evident strength and economy 
of space.” ‘Iwo greatest factors—floor space and light. Granite to stand 
for integrity and strength. “Know what you want; then find how to 
get it; then get it. A mass of details should not frighten—for a wood- 
pile dismays only the man who does not want to saw a stick.” 

He emphasized a tight basement to keep out dust and also especial 
attention to ventilation. He thought wood in some form was preferable 
to mosaic tile floor. Harking back to the anxiety that the old flavor of 
the Wanamaker’s he had created and nurtured be not destroyed, he 
queried: “Why not make special rooms for special stocks all through the 
store?” He wanted mahogany fronts and double doors both opening 
simultaneously, for elevators. Five elevators enough in a bank—they 


were not to be close to the ground floor exit doors anywhere. Forty-one 
passenger and 9g freight. 


206 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Employees on the Seventh floor. 5 floors for manufacturing. Altera- 
tion room to be provided with machines run by electricity, with a special 
motor on the floor. Lockers for employees can be distributed through 
the store if there is proper policing. North light for sewing. Cold 
storage to hold “four times as much as Field’s and take draperies,” 

“Furs—we must buy of M. F., fine goods. M. F. frame the pictures 
they sell, and buy frames ready made for cheap pictures. Send our 
people to study their china dept. They make their comforters and 
bedspreads.” 

“Fourteen story building. Keep upper stories 14 feet high. Three 
complete interior walls. Consider distribution of different floors.” 

‘““All obstacles must give way. Adhering snow falls off into gutters, 
and not upon the street. Must get all our boiler plant across the street. 
Must assure plenty of water or have artesian wells. Adding machines.” 
(Here are details of cornices sketched in.) 

“Conveniences should be where wanted. List all these.” Jewelry 
along Chestnut Street, where ‘“‘ceiling should be three feet higher, 
enriched and carved. Consider again work room of N. Y. Store to give 
light to those who sew rather than to the carpets.” 


No apology is needed for this summary. More than 
anything the biographer could write does it indicate how 
the great building in Philadelphia is as much John Wana- 
maker’s very own as was the old Grand Depot. It is the 
embodiment of his ideas." All obstacles did give way. 
But just before he returned home to guide with his own 
hand the first steel pillar into its place, he wrote in Paris, 
on June 16, 1904: 


The buyers who have just come from home tell me how the diggers 
have grubbed up the roots of things at Juniper Street. Ah me! It is a 


* After the second Chicago visit he continued to follow the modifications 
of plans, and decided every detail himself. For instance, when he was at 
the Hotel Royal Ponciana at Palm Beach, on February 12, 1904, he received 
a telegram from one of his people, who was in Chicago going over the 
new plans with the architect. To the query, “Shall we omit columns ninth 
floor north and south sections same as third floor?” he wired in care of 
Burnham: “What will the additional cost be? How are upper stories 
affected?” The change was not O.K.’d until Wanamaker saw the new 
plans. During his absences in Europe he was consulted by cable whenever 
any question arose that had to do with the physical structure of the building. 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 207 


part of myself that goes out and away with the downing of the worn-out 
old building. But the best remains with the faithful ones still there, 
whose work abides and whose valor of noble service can never be forgot- 
ten. My heart has an ache in it, though! + 


The second section presented a problem all its own. 
While in the first and third sections it was possible during 
excavations and the erection of the framework to shut off 
a portion or all from time to time, the middle section had 
to be built in such a way that at no time the Market and 
Chestnut Street ends be separated. A complete suspension 
of communications and the failure to maintain at least a 
thoroughfare for employees and customers would have seri- 
ously crippled the business. Experience had been an inval- 
uable teacher. What was learned in the excavations of the 
first section was useful in making possible a still greater 
feat—maintaining the life and circulation of all the depart- 
ments while the middle section was being constructed. In 
a personal message to his employees Wanamaker gave them 
a diagram of how the foundations were being built, to assure 
them that safety measures were being taken in the under- 
pinning. He explained that he was digging thirty-four 
feet to water line and then on through eleven more feet 
of gravel, that solid rock was under the entire block, and 
that the beams used for the floors were from twelve to 
eighteen tons each. At the end he stated that “the new 
building and the old also shall have my closest personal 
superintendence.” To his people the last sentence was 
worth more than all the technical explanations that went 
before. 


*But when the first section was opened, in 1906, there was joy in the 
achievement. Wanamaker wrote: “Compare, if you can, the old freight 
station’s miserable lamps with to-night’s mighty blaze of electricity shining 
from the three hundred and sixty-three windows of the little section of our 
new building on less than one-fourth of the block at Juniper and Market 
Streets. Picture, if you can, how the whole place will look when the other 
sections are completed. Back of the light—electricity; back of the elec- 
tricity—dynamos and engines; back of the dynamos and engines—mind!” 


208 JOHN WANAMAKER 


With his own employees Wanamaker had never experi- 
enced even the symptoms of a mutinous spirit, let alone a 
strike, during a business career of over forty years. It 
remained for him to be confronted with a labor problem 
during the second year of the building of the first section 
of his new store. With thousands of men, none of them 
employed directly by him, working for numerous contrac- 
tors, he had thought it wise in the very beginning to avoid 
trouble by stipulating that only union labor be used. To 
this his people had so rigidly adhered that he was astonished 
to find the unions squabbling with one another and with 
contractors, although, as he was able to declare publicly, 
“not a mechanic has been employed on the building except 
a union man.” During the summer and early autumn of 
1905 labor troubles multiplied. Used to remedying diffi- 
culties and clearing up misunderstandings by knowing how 
and by being willing to make things right, it was a revela- 
tion, which ended in angering him, to discover that there 
was nothing that he could do to get the men in some essen- 
tial crafts back to work and hurry the completion of the 
section. Finally, on October 3, 1905, he sent to his con- 
struction agents a long memorandum: 


The petty squabbles we have had in this one section of the building 
are enough for me. Our contracts are at such a point that we can stop 
if Philadelphia does not want our building and if its mechanics are 
ready to take the responsibility of stopping it. We have lived in this 
old building a good many years and can still go on as we have in the past. 
I am not going to have a lot of money tied up in disputes between 
various labor organizations with contractors due to matters with which 
we have nothing to do. The horror of it is that notwithstanding con- 
tracts that the labor organizations made not to enter into sympathetic 
strikes, they simply laugh in your face and walk out of your building, no 
matter what the consequences may be, when they want to. 

I was born a workingman and am friendly to all mechanics and believe 
that they have rights that will justify their organization, but I do not 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 209 


believe that as long as they are not responsible for their contracts and 
do not act honorably to people who want to employ them, that anybody 
will feel much inclined to lock up indefinitely large sums of money to 
improve the city or to benefit themselves. Please give me early informa- 
tion as to our exact relations to the granite people and the iron contrac- 
tors and Messrs. ‘Thompson, Starrett & Co., with a view of arranging 
to defer the erection of the next section of our building until there 
is a better mind all around. 

This is what we will do with the present section of the building— 
get the glass in and the building materials that are scattered about off 
of the floors and into the basement—let us clean up the building and get 
into it, plastered or unplastered, with elevators or without, and we will 
use it until the sky is brighter, The people of course will be put to 
serious inconvenience, but they will have to be told the causes that bring 
it about—that we are not responsible for it and can’t help that we are 
held up by the conditions in the building trades. 

This is plain and final and you will be prompt in bringing before me 
our exact position with every contract that is pending. 


Wanamaker had come to the limit of patience. He 
meant what he said, and ordered the excavating for the 
second section to be suspended. He reiterated his decision 
to give up the project for the time being. He was even 
more positive, and said that “the added cost of having so 
much money locked up in an idle building is a warning to us 
of what we may expect at each step we take.” He declared 
that he would not build the second and third sections until 
he was assured of the good faith of the union leaders. He 
explained this decision thus: 


A threat has been openly made, which can be easily proven. Repre- 
sentatives of labor organizations have given us notice that notwithstanding 
our strict use of union labor, and conformity with the rules of their 
organization so far as informed, that we shall not be permitted to build 
the second section of our building which we expected to start with the 
first of January next, unless it is built according to the views of labor 
leaders who make interpretations of their own rules and relations to their 
kindred organizations to suit their notions at particular times, whether 
they agree or not with former declarations and customs that have main- 


210 JOHN WANAMAKER 


tained. The unfinished building itself in the very heart of the city, 
held up by the disagreements and irreconcilability of the various branches 
of work people who have left it, is an object lesson to warn all enter- 
prising people against undertakings dependent upon the present rule and 
regulation of labor organizations. 


The labor troubles were finally adjusted. _Wanamaker’s 
bold threat, and his unhestitating use of publicity, did much 
to turn the tide against the labor leaders. Seeing that the 
greatest piece of building construction in Philadelphia was 
on the point of being abandoned or at least indefinitely sus- 
pended, at the beginning of winter, the workers (perhaps 
it was their wives) refused to sanction “sympathetic” strikes. 
They returned to the job, and the second section began to 
go up. 

The slow progress of the building operations, aggravated 
by the labor difficulties, meant not only annoyance in store- 
keeping, but a serious loss through carrying so much util- 
ized space. Then, when the improvements that provoked 
the rise in assessment were still of no value to the store, 
but rather an expense, the tax assessors made a sweeping 
increase in their appraisal of the Wanamaker block. To 
the Board of Revision, in 1906, Wanamaker made an earn- 
est plea for relief, pointing out that another year would 
pass before he would begin to reap any profit from his 
improvements. He showed how the method of building 
that he had been compelled to adopt kept idle through 
years a large portion of his space, and he remarked that 
he had the right to expect encouragement and support in 
an undertaking that meant so much for Philadelphia as 
well as for his own business. The increased assessment was 
scaled down for a year. But it was put on again the next 
year. Taxes for empty buildings is an item that must be 
included in the total cost of the nine years’ enterprise. 
During the early part of the period, when the memory of 


HONE ORV HEV PHILADELPHIA: STORE 211% 


Wanamaker’s political activities still rankled, the municipal 
authorities sometimes went out of their way to hamper the 
progress of the work. 

We shall skip several years, during which the new build- 
ing in New York went up and was opened, the panic of 
1907 was weathered, and Wanamaker consented to have 
issued $6,000,000 of five-per-cent gold mortgage bonds for 
the completion of the Philadelphia store. The bonds were 
taken up immediately. There was already tangible evidence 
of the beauty and substantial character of the new building 
and of Wanamaker’s success in constructing a granite edifice 
of fourteen massive stories. No event better vindicated his 
pioneer vision in building construction than the linking 
up of the stores with the subway systems in Philadelphia 
and New York. Wanamaker did not have to adjust him- 
self to the new conditions of transportation. He was ready 
before they were! On August 3, 1908, the Philadelphia 
advertising announced that “Wanamaker’s in New York 
and Philadelphia are the only two stores in both cities that 
are built on the same level as the subway station.” When 
the first train arrived at the Thirteenth Street station, the 
passengers could look right into the windows of Wana- 
maker’s, and when they got off they could go into the new 
“subway store” without climbing a single step.’ 

As he was coming to the last section, Wanamaker’s diary 
records, on October 26, 1908: 


There is a big hole in the Chestnut Street end of the block, and it is 
always full of horses and carts. ‘The store is crowded, but it is because 
the people are pushed into a smaller area. ‘The business is behind last 
year and I think it will continue so until we get more room again. 


* The spacious basement of the new building, on the subway level, became 
“The Down Stairs Store,” a name copyrighted by John Wanamaker. ‘The 
idea of having in the basement a complete stock of different kinds of lower- 
priced goods, made possible by the new buildings in New York and Phila- 
ceRant was an innovation in general storekeeping, quickly followed by 
others. 


212 JOHN WANAMAKER 


The Christmas season of 1908 was the hardest John 
Wanamaker ever experienced, deprived as he was of the 
Chestnut Street frontage. He decided that the third sec- 
tion would have to go faster, and he dreamed of getting it 
completed for the Christmas season of 1909. On Febru- 
ary 15, he wrote: 


I went over to the new section and there must be 40 of the columns 
in place and some of the eye beams. Things are going with a rush. Do 
you know that there is but little building going on and materials and men 
come along just when you want them, and they work hard because money 
is scarce with them. 


Everything was ready for the laying of the corner stone 
on June 12, 1909. For this occasion he prepared a long 
address, reviewing the business history of the Philadelphia 
store. But on the previous day he wrote: 


I shall speak only part of it, because the program is long, and the 
addresses of the others are important and to be printed also. Everything 
is keyed to the highest pitch, and my people say that “To-morrow will 
be our biggest day.” I have much yet to do in rewriting the address 


after it comes to me in print. I must take pains, as it is to be a landmark 


for future guidance.4 


On October 4, 1909, the master builder told the Wana- 
maker Business Club that no expense must be spared to 
make things perfect but that 


* The full account of the various ceremonies attendant upon the comple- 
tion of the new building in New York in 1907, and of the Philadelphia 
building in 1909, 1910, and 1911, together with the text of the speeches 
delivered on those occasions, can be found in the Golden Book of the Wana- 
maker Stores, which was published in two volumes in 1911 and 1913. What 
the founder himself said, in regard to his own life and work and business 
policies, has been drawn upon throughout his biography, and is therefore 
given no place here. What he thought of his new store can be summed up 
in his own words in an editorial: “This unusually large building, if it were 
a ship, would be rated and recorded by the insurance companies AA-At, as 
of the highest quality of safety, copper-fastened, powerfully equipped, pre- 
pared, humanly speaking, for every emergency.” And some years later, in 
November, 1919, speaking of the difficulties in building the Philadelphia 
store, he wrote that “After it had been erected as a splendid physical monu- 
ment, I realized that it, in itself, did not mean much—it was the idea 
behind it that counted. The building or vehicle that incloses the seller and 
his goods is not important until his reputation is made.” 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 213 


the best part of perfection is making things safe. We can’t afford to 
have an elevator—not one—that is not equipped to make it the safest 
thing that we can lift with; and so with our electric light. 


We must not forget that Wanamaker had been through 
two great fires where “fireproof” proved not to be the 
right word, and where fire-fighting appliances had not 
worked.* Meadowbrook, his son Thomas’s house, had 
been destroyed on the eve of starting the plans for the new 
building. A fire in the basement of the old Chestnut 
Street end had almost created a panic at II a.M. one morn- 
ing in 1906, only a week before Christmas, when the store 
was crowded. His own beloved Lindenhurst had gone up 
in flames at the beginning of 1907, when one section of 
the new store was already completed and the second section 
was being built. Architects and contractors found Wana- 
maker difficult to deal with at the best—he always wanted 
to be so sure that everything was right and was going to 
work out as he had planned it and as they assured him 
it would. But when it came to fire-fighting appliances, to 
elevator safety devices, and to the proper insulation of 
electric wires, he was a terror. His attitude was invariably 
that of being from Missouri. We can imagine, then, what 
a relief it was to others as well as to himself when the 
last sprinklers and hose were put in place, the last wires 
were laid, and the last elevators installed. 

Four entries in the 1910 diary are chosen to show how 
Wanamaker kept everlastingly on the job in the final stages 
of the new building, as he had done from the beginning. 


January 6, 
This big place begins to show the touch of Rodman’s artistic eyes, 
though it is far from right yet. It seems difficult to get any kind of 
merchandise to look properly placed in the Grand Court. 


* See above, vol. ii, pp. 139-40. 


214. JOHN WANAMAKER 


March 1, 


I have been in Philadelphia since Thursday night, doing the anniver- 
sary and giving myself up to locating the final spaces and places in the 
new building from stem to stern, from top to bottom, having with me 
the managers and chiefs of the sections as required. 


March 4, 


I am going to Philadelphia to-night because of the expected new strike 
of 100,000 mechanics at midnight to-night, all dropping their tools in 
every part of the city to cripple all buildings, out of sympathy with the 
trolley strikers, in order to compel the transit company to come to the 
strikers’ terms. We have had between 4 and 500 mechanics at work 
on the new building, and now they will leave, and for how long nobody 
knows. ‘The labor unions can call out our elevator men and engineers 
and stop our engines and elevators from running. I must be on deck 
to-morrow to arrange anything made necessary by this new condition. 
Between the two cities there is enough going on to keep me busy. 


May 4, 
Rodman knows the wrestling I am doing with the new fixtures of the 
new sections. Counters like those of the 5 & 10 cent store are easily 
laid out, but to make the suitable setting for the jewelry and for the 
artistic things of even dry goods, requires more brains than I have at my 
command. 


It was a proud day for Wanamaker when he put the 
capstone in place on June 12, 1910, and a prouder day still 
when he opened with his own hands the massive Chestnut 
Street doors six months later." His capstone speech is one 
of the most charming and appealing of his addresses, and 
in it he gave some idea of the difficulties he had to over- 
come in realizing his dreams.” On the capstone he had 
written: 


"From the diary on this day: “14 Nov. Such a tremendous day it has 
been. I opened the central door on Chestnut Street at one minute to eight 
and flocks of people poured in all day. I kept on shaking hands until flat- 
teries drowned me. ‘Then I went off to see callers. It is now 7:30 and I am 
going to look in at the Business Club and go out with Rodman to get an 
8:30 supper in the Bungalow and take first train to N. Y. in the morning.” 


* This address is printed in full in The Golden Book of the Wanamaker 
Stores, vol. i, pp. 126-131. 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 215 


LET THOSE WHO FOLLOW ME CONTINUE TO BUILD 
WITH THE PLUMB OF HONOR, THE LEVEL OF TRUTH, 
AND THE SQUARE OF INTEGRITY, EDUCATION, COUR- 
TESY AND MUTUALITY. 


The final touches were postponed until after the Christ- 
mas season, not only because of the shortness of time, but 
also because Wanamaker told his people that they were 
never too old or experienced to learn, and that the first 
Christmas in the new building ought to teach everybody 
from himself down to stock boy and cash girl many lessons 
of adjustment to the new conditions. He reminded them 
all that it was the law of life that privileges entailed 
responsibilities, and that from those who had much, much 
was expected. 

The dedication of the building was first planned to coin- 
cide with the fiftieth anniversary of the business. Then it 
was thought wise to postpone the arduous round of festivi- 
ties from April until after the founder had been to Europe 
for his cure and to attend the coronation in London. When 
he returned, it was not the season for a dedication; and his 
store families were more interested in the Golden Jubilee 
of the man than anything else. During his absence the 
installation of the organ in the Grand Court had been com- 
pleted. Back in Philadelphia, he wrote: 


I heard the big St. Louis organ yesterday for the first time. It is a 
beauty and a hummer in the great fine court. Think of a store with 
the undoubtedly largest organ in it of the United States and its echo— 
a fine Choir Organ on the roth floor—and its still other great organ in 
Egyptian Hall. 


Surely we are well organ-ized. 


When his son suggested the afternoon of December 30— 
the last business day of the fiftieth year—for the dedica- 
tion, the elder Wanamaker assented most heartily. Another 
Christmas season was coming on. It was well to concen- 


216 JOHN WANAMAKER 


trate wholly on the business until December 25. Wana- 
maker had now come to leave almost everything in New 
York to the son. He had given up his New York apart- 
ment, and he was eager to concentrate all his time and 
energy upon preserving in the new body the old spirit of 
the business that he had jealously watched over for half 
a century. He still wanted Wanamaker’s to be what it 
had long ago been called, “The store of a thousand sur- 
prises.” It is not astonishing, therefore, that we should 


find in his diary: 


October 13, 1911—I am putting fire and sword and gunpowder and 
dynamite around me. I am afraid everybody will soon be running away 
from me when they see me coming. ‘The eruptions are Vesuvius-like to 
some of our old fogies. 

October 18—I met the 40 Silver and Jewelry people at 8 a.m.; the 
Women Buyers, 25 of them—some with their assistants—at 8:30; and 
10 of the men on the Executive Staff at 9:30; and the Board of the 
College at 12. ‘The days are very full. | 


It was a surprise when he learned that President Taft 
had accepted his son’s invitation to make an address at the 
dedication of the store. He had not thought of it; he 
had not expected it; he had not used any influence to bring 
it about. It was unusual for the President of the United 
States to participate in the dedication of a private business 
building; probably there was no precedent for it. But 
Taft was glad to establish a precedent. Wanamaker’s life 
and work had proved that A. T. Stewart was right in his 
forecast to President Grant of the réle the merchant of the 
future might play in the life of the nation. 

That the man was worthy of the honor paid him by the 
President of the United States none disputed. It was uni- 
versally felt that President Taft had gracefully interpreted 
the attitude of the American people toward John Wana- 
maker. The building, too, was worthy of the honor. We 


HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA STORE 217 


have not attempted to describe it or to quote from the presi- 
dential and other addresses on the dedication day. Pro- 
fessional comment, concise and to the point, seems to the 
biographer worth more than the eulogies of laymen. Said 
the Architectural Record for June, 1911: 


It is a concrete demonstration of original thought. In the new Wana- 
maker building are centered a group of technical and mechanical features 
which illustrate the highest constructive skill. The difficulties entailed 
in the erection of the building were many. In some features they were 
without precedent. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 


NLY Americans who made their living by their pens 

or who were constantly in public life—and not all of 
them—have to their credit as many writings as John Wan- 
amaker. For a man who was always active in business his 
literary output was incredible. And yet the longest manu- 
script that has come into our possession is the life of Isaiah 
Williamson. In eighty type-written pages Wanamaker 
told the story of a man who had amassed a competence at 
the age of forty and had decided to give up business for 
travel and a reflective life. Something prevented Wil- 
liamson from doing this. He went back to work and 
became one of the richest men in Philadelphia. But he 
lived to the end of his days in a strictly frugal, almost 
miserly, manner. Although he was a bachelor and had 


only collateral heirs, Williamson allowed himself no lux- » 


ury. He seemed to have no thought to provide himself 
with even ordinary comforts. He could not have been 
called a miser, however, for he did not worship money; in 
fact, during his life he gave over two million dollars for 
the foundation of the school that bears his name.* 
Wanamaker admired Williamson’s thrift and industry. 
He had great respect for his business ability. He appre- 
ciated the broad vision of the man in the working out of 
whose philanthropic plans he played a large part. But 
Wanamaker could not feel that Williamson had made the 
most of his talents or of the fruit of them. He was embar- 


* See below, chap. xx. 
218 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 219 


rassed in the effort to give a discriminating delineation of 
the character and a just appraisal of the life work of his 
friend. Probably for that reason the biography of Isaiah 
Williamson remained unpublished. How hold up to the 
emulation of young men this frugal Quaker who, despite 
his industry, his thrift, and his great talents, had so nar- 
rowly circumscribed his activities, who had in the final 
analysis got so little out of life? 

Genial living appealed to Wanamaker. From boyhood 
he liked nice things—good clothes, a comfortable home, 
luxuries within his means, diversions that did not conflict 
with his religious convictions. He was the whole-hearted, 
simple-minded type of man who could not have made a 
fortune by display and catering to adornment had he not 
believed that money ought to be used, when one had it to 
spare, for creature comforts. His advertising invited peo- 
ple to buy good things, tasteful things, beautiful things. 
He set the example in his own life. His philosophy of liv- 
ing was far from being that of a utilitarian. 

All this did not mean, however, that he did not set high 
store by thrift, In the last year of his life he answered a 
high-school principal’s query thus: 

Many young people feel that a good appearance is of more importance 
than anything else, but unless it is supplemented by habits of thrift, it 
will not get one very far. Thrift is one of the foundation stones of 
character and the practicing of it makes easier the cultivation of self- 
control, which is also one of the greatest factors in life. An active 
account in a savings bank is one of the best recommendations that a 
young man or a young woman can have, because it indicates that they 
intend to try and succeed by their own efforts, and not to depend on 
others for their success. 


Shortly before he died he wrote to a Southern corre- 
spondent: 


What heartaches and humiliations could be avoided if every man, 


2.20 JOHN WANAMAKER 


woman, and child were to practice the cultivation of the thrift habit! 
The way to save is to begin at once. Put away what you can in a reliable 
savings bank and do not withdraw any part of the principal except to 
make a permanent investment when a sufficient amount has accumulated. 
Once a person has acquired the habit of saving, it is a pleasure rather 
than a hardship to watch money grow, with the added satisfaction of 
knowing that there is something to fall back upon in an emergency. 
Another advantage is the fact that people who save are not likely to run 
into debt. Debt is the millstone that has ruined and retarded thousands 
of lives, 


His horror of debt was equaled only by his abhorrence 
of waste and extravagance, which he called his “pet aver- 
sions.” In a Commencement address to Perkiomen Semt- 
nary in 1902 he declared that debt was “the ruin of busi- 
ness and social life—the downfall of more men and the 
cause of slavery to more women than any other one cause.” 
He regarded “easy credit and consequent debt as the worst 
of all destroyers in the business world.” 

It made Wanamaker the merchant unhappy to think 
that the goods he displayed might lead people into the 
temptation of buying what they could not afford. For 
this reason he admonished his people not to “oversell.” 
He devised and stuck by the system of return of goods. 
He wanted his business always to be on a cash basis, and 
he did not encourage people—or allow them—to run charge 
accounts that would put them into debt. He arranged a 
budget service to advise young folks who were setting up 
housekeeping so that they would not get in over their depth 
in furnishing the new homes they were founding. Above 
all, he did not hesitate to publish in the very advertisements 


*Mr. Charles B. Dunn has called our attention to the fact that when 
Wanamaker died he had no debts. “Although we did business together 
since Mr. Wanamaker floated his first commercial paper, and although he 
was hard pressed once or twice in periods of expansion and, like other big 
business men, in panic years, there was never a time that he did not have 
tangible assets to cover his obligations. In the latter years of his life he 
managed his affairs so that he died not owing a penny.” 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 221 


that were calculated to attract the buying public such edi- 
torials as this: 


It is Better to Wear Patched Shoes and pay as you go than to be in 
debt, wearing patent leathers and silken gowns and losing your self- 
respect by inability to keep contracts too easily entered into. It is said 
that the downfall of many men and women is to be traced to getting 
hopelessly into debt and becoming disgraced by broken promises, the 
memory of which destroyed their chances and prospects. Be advised to 
think twice before you plunge head over heels into debt, 


We have seen how hard he fought, when he was Post- 
master-General and afterwards, to induce the government 
to sponsor a postal savings system, on the plea that it was 
the government’s business to encourage and make possible 
thrift. He contended that the post-office would not be 
competing with savings banks, but would in reality be help- 
ing them by giving a government guaranty to timid depos- 
itors. His was almost a voice crying in the wilderness for 
years on the matter of the necessity for this governmental 
underwriting to be offered in large industrial centers where 
most of the workers were recent immigrants, suspicious of 
private banks.* 

A year before he entered Harrison’s Cabinet he had 
become convinced of the usefulness of savings banks to 
encourage the smallest depositors—banks that would not 
turn up their noses at trifling sums. By the same token he 
felt that those who secured loans should be allowed to pay 
them back in monthly installments with interest. A bank 
of this character, operated without capital stock and without 
profit, would encourage savings by soliciting small sums, 
by paying a generous interest rate, and by helping borrow- 
ers to get out of debt in an easy way. Over thirty years 
of close contact with Bethany folk had impressed upon him 
the beneficent character of such an institution. Savings 


* See above, vol. i, pp. 282-5, and vol. ii, pp. 119-20. 


222 JOHN WANAMAKER 


being an integral part of the foundation of every man’s 
house, it was an activity in which a church could well 
engage. 

In order to make this unique idea feasible, Wanamaker 
consulted his lawyers and was told that the State Legisla- 
ture would have to pass a special act to make such a bank 
legal under the Pennsylvania banking laws. Friends were 
found at Harrisburg, when the bill was drafted, to intro- 
duce it. There was no opposition, and the Senate and 
House of Representatives passed, on May 20, 1889, “an act 
to provide for the incorporation and regulation of savings 
banks and institutions without capital stock, established for 
the encouragement of saving money.” Under this act “The 
First Penny Bank of Philadelphia” was incorporated on 
November 8, 1889. 

The organization had been launched on July 10, 1888, 
in the book room of the Bethany Sunday School, and 
accepted deposits of “one cent and upward.” When it was 
authorized to open as a bank, Wanamaker purchased a 
house at the corner of Bainbridge and 21st Streets, and had 
it made over into modest offices. He took the presidency, 
and got substantial men—most of them Bethany associates— 
to serve with him on the understanding that it was a purely 
benevolent organization. The charter made it illegal for 
any officer, trustee, or employee to borrow its funds on any 
collateral whatsoever. 

The beginning and development of the Penny Savings 
Bank make a romantic story. The first helper was D. L. 
Anderson, who was associated with Wanamaker in Bethany 
work.” Anderson was a successful clothing merchant, one 

*D. L. Anderson, at this writing, is still living. At the Union League 
he told the biographer that when he came to Philadelphia, a country boy, 
to look for work in the 1850's, he happened to see “Welcome” over a door, 


and went in. It was the Y.M.C.A. Secretary Wanamaker, who made him 
welcome, got his address, and the next day at his room he found a letter 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 223 


of Wanamaker’s intimates, and an invaluable worker at 
Bethany, especially during the years that Wanamaker spent 
in Washington. Anderson told us that “the Penny Savings 
Bank was started on a bicycle.” It grew through the finan- 
cial ability and devoted sacrifice of the organizers and direc- 
tors and through the precious asset of implicit confidence the 
depositors had in the name of the founder and president. 
When it began to grow there was naturally opposition, and 
it required courage and self-control for Wanamaker and his 
associates to keep on quietly with the great work. 

After five years, during four of which Wanamaker had 
been in Washington, and the last of which was marked by 
a panic in the country, nearly six thousand active accounts 
were on the books, and there was over two hundred thou- 
sand dollars on deposit. After five years more the deposits 
had passed the million mark—all small accounts, This fact 
led enemies to take advantage of an escapade of one of 
the bank’s paid officials to spread rumors that it was insol- 
vent. John Wanamaker, president, and Samuel M. Clem- 
ent, formerly sheriff of Philadelphia, vice-president, were 
both in Europe. The Evening Star of July 8, 1899, car- 
ried a first-page story, with huge headlines: “Muddle in 
the Bank. Books of First Penny Savings Fund to be exam- 
ined. Has there been defalcation? Commissioner acts.” 
Wanamaker cabled the State Commissioner of Banking to 
make an investigation, and published in all the newspapers 
the commissioner’s sworn statement that the bank was “in 
a sound and prosperous condition, with its funds safely 
invested in first mortgages and ground rents.” 

This was the last attack. The period of imitation had 
now come. All over the United States men began to study 


and book left by Wanamaker. It was he who had active charge of the 
arrangements for the City of Philadelphia’s statue to John Wanamaker on 
City Hall Plaza, erected in 1923. 


224 JOHN WANAMAKER 


the Wanamaker savings bank, and a new era was opened 
in the banking history of the United States. 

As the bank grew, it raised its interest rate from three to 
three and half per cent, then to four, then to four and a 
quarter—always keeping a little ahead of other savings 
funds. In 1915 the bank premises were remodeled. In 
1919 a branch office was opened in a building owned by John 
Wanamaker in the heart of the city, on Chestnut Street 
below Broad. Eighteen :inonths after Wanamaker’s death, 
the First Penny Savings Bank had its own building—at a 
cost of over one million dollars—on the opposite side of 
Chestnut Street from the Wanamaker store. Its books 
carried nearly forty-nine thousand open accounts, with 
deposits of over thirteen million dollars. And there was 
a surplus of nearly six hundred thousand dollars. 

This astonishing record, unequaled in the history of 
American banking, can be attributed to the combination of 
ability and devotion of the board of directors under the 
leadership of Wanamaker. He had adopted the motto, 
“Successful from the start,” and he carried it right through 
year after year. His pioneering instinct had led him to 
believe in the need and the field for such a bank.* He 
got rid of all obstacles. He established the innovation of 
evening hours, now followed by savings banks throughout 
the country, and he proved that savings bank advertising 
could be made profitable. 

It is not generally known that Wanamaker was as much 
of an originator in bank advertising as he was in general 
advertising. He wrote the advertisements himself, super- 


*It would be possible to show from the records of Wanamaker’s unique 
bank that in its early years it grew through the pennies of Bethany and 
neighborhood children. Long before it was established Wanamaker advo- 
cated a savings system in the public schools. A report to the American 
Bankers Association in 1924 stated that 2,869,497 children had pass books 
in banks through the school savings system, and that their balances on 
June 30, 1924, reached $25,913,531.15. 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 225 


vised their illustration, insisted that they be inserted in the 
daily newspapers despite the cost; and at his own expense 
he published savings-bank tracts, many of which he wrote 
himself. These advertisements and tracts are the forerun- 
ners, inspirers, and models of the type of bank advertising 
with which every town in the United States is now familiar. 

It is hard to select examples among the many slogans 
and appeals to save which helped materially to build up 
not only the First Penny Savings Bank, but all the other 
savings banks of Philadelphia. Wanamaker declared that 
since the idea was to encourage thrift and help people to 
financial independence it made little difference whether 
those who read his advertisements put their money in his 
bank or another. From the advertisements of the last year 
of Wanamaker’s life, written on his house boat in Florida, 
we take: 


$AVE AND $UCCEED 
ZAVING WILL $TART YOU UP THE LADDER OF $UCCESS 
MAKE YOUR MONEY WORK FOR YOU 


In the omnipotent penny I believe, and in her little son, half-penny. 
If they sleep they come to nothing, but put them on the go in the 
Savings Fund and they are sure to come to something, perhaps a fortune. 


$AVINGS ARE SMART AND $ENSIBLE $TORAGE? 


In emphasizing the unique character of the First Penny 
Savings Bank and its advertising we must remember that 
Wanamaker was not only blazing a trail, but that the enter- 
prise was wholly altruistic. The board meetings were held 
in the president’s private office in the Philadelphia store, 
and he expected his associates—all volunteers like himself— 
to attend.” Frequent and prolonged absence from Phila- 


* The illustration was a big penny holding out her hand to a little penny. 
*It speaks volumes for the spirit of service that Wanamaker was able to 
instill into others, and the devotion of his associates to his memory, to record 
that when the biographer was working in the private files, more than two 
years after John Wanamaker’s death, the board of directors of the First 


226 JOHN WANAMAKER 


delphia in the latter years of his life made impossible his 
own presence always. But wherever he was, and whatever 
he was doing, the weekly balance sheet was forwarded to 
the president, who never failed to look over it and to make 
inquiries about items on it. The private files contain these 
sheets, carefully preserved through all the years. On most 
of them are marginal notes in pencil. Wanamaker liked 
to pass personally upon investments, and he used to say 
to the other directors—busy men like himself—that in their 
multiplicity of interests there was none that was so much a 
sacred trust as this enterprise. 

Twelve years before the bank was provided for Bethany 
a savings fund was started in the Wanamaker store. Wan- 
amaker instituted it in 1876, shortly after the Grand Depot 
was opened. Employees were encouraged to deposit their 
savings with the cashier. They could be withdrawn at any 
time and to any amount without notice. He allowed five 
per cent interest, and to those who had achieved a creditable 
record for savings through seven years, an extra premium 
of five per cent was given. In 1897 a junior savings fund 
was established, with special inducements to the younger 
employees to save their pennies." Various building and 
loan associations were formed among the employees back 
in the days when organizations of this character were a 
new departure. Wanamaker considered building and loan 
stock as the very best form of combined investment and 
savings for the salaried man. When his advice was asked 
concerning the investment of sums that had accumulated 
in the savings bank, he invariably answered: ‘Good first 


Penny Savings Bank were still holding their monthly meetings in the private 
office of the founder and late president. These meetings have recently been 
transferred to the new building of the bank on Chestnut Street opposite the 
store. 

* At one time he actually matched the juniors’ savings from their wages, 
dollar for dollar. But so few took advantage of it that he grew discouraged 
about this. 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 227 


mortgages up to not more than sixty per cent of the impar- 
tially appraised value of the property, preferably in your 
own locality, but never on the homes of friends or 
acquaintances.” 

Throughout his long life, by example as well as by pre- 
cept, Wanamaker expressed the conviction that life insur- 
ance, equally with a savings account, was an essential foun- 
dation stone in every man’s house. He took out his first 
insurance policy when he was still in his teens, working on a 
small salary." When he was married, and before he started 
Oak Hall, he increased his insurance “until it hurt,” as he 
put it. No policy was allowed to lapse. The premiums 
had the first call upon his income. When he began to 
prosper and get beyond the place where his death would 
have left his family not provided for, instead of turning 
a deaf ear to the solicitations of agents, he was always keen 
to study the new forms of life insurance that were being 
evolved, and he kept on taking out new policies. Before 
any other business man in America he realized the unique 
value of life insurance not only for protection, but as a 
business asset. On his fiftieth birthday he received a let- 
ter, signed by the presidents of the two big life-insurance 
companies of Philadelphia, and by the general agents of 
all the other standard companies represented in the city, 
congratulating him upon his good health and success, and 
upon the fact that he was “insured for a larger sum than 
any other American citizen.” ° 

When the National Association of Life Underwriters 
held its convention in Philadelphia in 1895, Wanamaker 

* He told the National Life Underwriters’ Convention on October 25, 1895, 
that he had “placed his first policy of insurance while working on a small 
salary,” that he “had the policy yet,” and that he thought “it was forty 
years ago—certainly it was at least thirty-five.” 

* “John Wanamaker carries $1,000,000, passing John B. Stetson as the 


most heavily insured man in the United States.’—Philadelphia Inquirer, 
April 7, 1888. 


228 JOHN WANAMAKER 


was invited to address the insurance men at the Continental 
Hotel. He stood before them as a man unique in the 
annals of life insurance, holding sixty-two policies for a 
face value of over a million and a half, and paying annually 
over $100,000 in premiums. Up to 1895 he had paid in 
to the insurance companies $815,209.54. Being a man after 
their own heart, it was natural that the diners should receive 
him with a storm of applause. But they did not realize 
the treat that was in store for them. Their speaker was 
able to give a reason for the faith that was in him. He 
told the life-insurance agents that if he carried more insur- 
ance than any other man in the world, it was not because 
he wanted to make a record. He simply used his judg- 
ment, which told him that life insurance was a good propo- 
sition for any man, no matter how much money he had or 
no matter how great were his financial burdens and oppor- 
tunities for investment in other directions." Therefore he 
had always “increased his policies as he could.” He 
declared that life insurance had a place all of its own in 
the scheme of every man’s life; that it was indispensable 
to poor and rich alike; that of all investments life insurance 
alone withstood panics; and that policyholders were active 
partners in great corporations. This conviction made him 
a life-insurance missionary. So: 

Soon after I came into business, such was my interest in life insurance 
and belief in its wisdom, that one of the first reckless things I did was 


to make a Christmas present of a $1,000 policy, paid for a year, to every 
man in my employ. I thought that it was a good investment. 


Such testimony was too good to be hid under a bushel. 
It was reprinted in insurance journals and in pamphlet 
form, and used by companies and their agents all over the 


* Up to his death John Wanamaker reaffirmed this attitude. He had long 
outlived his life-insurance policies, but he said that if conditions had changed 
at all it was in the direction of making heavy insurance more advisable than 
ever for the business man. 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 229 


world. Probably no one statement of a policyholder ever 
before or since resulted in such a tremendous increase in the 
volume of life-insurance business. Certainly the reasons 
for life insurance, given that evening, have never been 
more decisively and convincingly phrased, if the fact that 
after thirty years they are still being used in advertising 
matter is any indication. He told the insurance men: 

“My five reasons for my sixty-two life insurance poli- 
cies: 1. Afraid I might become uninsurable; 2. Best form 
of investment; 3. A savings fund; 4. From the standpoint 
of quick determination, more profitable than any other 
investment I could make; 5. Enables a man to give away 
all he wishes, and still make such an estate as he cares to 
leavey2.; 

Wanamaker was no undiscriminating enthusiast in life 
insurance. He insured in every good company. But he 
kept himself informed as to the standing of the companies, 
and when policies matured he compared performances with 
promises. For instance, he came to disbelieve in the ton- 
tine form of insurance, and did not hesitate to say so. On 
January 9, 1903, in acknowledging the settlement of a 
matured policy he wrote: “My tontine policies in the vari- 
ous companies have been extremely disappointing and con- 
trary to expectations held out when insurances were placed.” 

He was intensely interested in the movement to correct 
abuses in the great New York companies and to remove 
them from family or group control. The files contain 
reports of investigating committees, with marginal notes in 
his own hand. When the insurance investigations were 
in full blast, he was invited to be one of twenty-five Phila- 
delphians, who had large policies, to organize a Pennsyl- 
vania State branch of the Mutual Life Policy Holders’ 


* Since Wanamaker’s death the biographer has seen this statement of 1895 
used several times in insurance advertisements in daily newspapers of our 
largest cities. 


230 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Association. His acceptance and his willingness to take an 
active part in restoring the confidence of the people in the 
great companies led Judge Parker and Samuel Untermyer 
to urge him to run for Mutual Life trustee on the Fusion 
ticket. 

Together with Charles E. Hughes, John Wanamaker 
consented to join Messrs. Dexter and Duncan, superintend- 
ents of the Domestic and Foreign Agencies, and Messrs. 
Hindman and Paige, managers at Louisville and Detroit, 
in contesting six places on the Administration ticket. Wan- 
amaker was the recipient of hundreds of letters and unso- 
licited proxies from all over the United States.* The 
correspondence is pathetic in some cases. Small policy- 
holders who did not know what it was all about and how 
to vote, but who felt sure that their money would be pro- 
tected if John Wanamaker would only vote for them, sent 
him their proxies. It was a touching example of confidence. 
Wanamaker and Hughes attended the election, but were 
defeated. The reforms, however, were made; so the pro- 
test had its effect.” 

Wanamaker did not wish his intervention to be misunder- 
stood. He stated publicly that he had more confidence 
than ever in the management of the Mutual Life as well 
as of the Equitable and the New York Life, and that what 


* On October 20, 1906, an Indian school-teacher wrote from Pine Ridge 
Agency, S. D.: “I hold a policy in the Mutual, and see that your name is on 
the Fusion ticket. Please accept my proxy. I worked in your great store in 
the transfer department at Philadelphia. I often regret that I did not stay 
there, but I was nothing but a little savage boy from the Wild West then. 
One thing I never let go. I have kept up my studies begun there. I am a 
full-blooded Sioux, but I always think that what white boys could do I could 
do it too.” 

* On the executive committee of the policyholders that backed Wanamaker 
and Hughes were representative Americans. One of them, Dr. Maurice 
Francis Egan, a professor at the Catholic University in Washington, wrote 
Wanamaker that the contest had served its purpose. Had not outstanding 
men consented to run, public opinion would not have been felt as it undoubt- 
edly was. The Fusion candidates failed of election only because of inability 
to split tickets and the relatively few number of voters and proxies. 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 231 


had happened was in the natural evolution of the life-insur- 
ance business. The great companies had become public 
trusts, to be administered hereafter solely for the benefit 
of their hundreds of thousands of policyholders. This 
principle had become established, and the conduct of big 
insurance companies was now no more a private concern 
than any other national institution, representing the whole 
people and responsible to them. He was not young enough 
to keep on increasing his insurance. His son Rodman, 
however, not only followed his father’s example, but went 
far beyond him.’ 

More notable even than the 1895 address was the ringing 
praise of life insurance and life-insurance agents at the 
Fidelity leaders’ convention in Philadelphia on Septem- 
ber 10, 1913. He said: “I would take a journey to San 
Francisco just to shake hands with the man who started me 
in life insurance, if he were living”; and, “I do not know 
men more worthy than those enlisted to do good work for 
life-insurance companies.” So great a believer was he in 
the mission of life insurance that he was able to declare: 

“T wish I knew how to buoy you up and give you a great 
sense of the splendid business you are in. What you do for 
a man who takes a policy of insurance is to endow him with 
something that remains for his heirs after he has left the 
world. It seems as though it pieced out his life by pro- 
tecting and producing an income for those for whom he 
cared in his working days. By your work you put money 
in trust for the wife and children. Do not go around in a 
sheepish way requesting permission to talk life insurance. 


*In his father’s life time Rodman Wanamaker took his place as the most 
heavily insured man in the world. He also became a trustee of the Mutual 
Life Insurance Company. In 1924, two years after John Wanamaker’s death, 
his son announced that he intended to increase his life insurance, which was 
already over $5,000,000, to as much as he could get. He authorized his 
agent to apply for additional insurance policies with standard companies all 
over the world until the limit for his age was reached. 


232 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Make a study of each man you are after; know how to 
approach him without saying a word about life insurance 
until you have his confidence. You can do almost anything 
you want with a man who has confidence in you. 

“There is a popular belief that many of the men who 
take up life insurance are men that have failed in business. 
This is altogether an error. The man that has failed in 
other businesses, unless it were for some causes that are 
extraordinary, such as the war, is a man that would fail in 
anything, and he would fail quicker in insurance than 
almost anything else. The railroad people are believed to 
be the brightest men in the country, but I believe there are 
far fewer accidents in the insurance line that you are run- 
ning than there are on the railroad lines.” 

The dignity and importance of the agent’s work was 
not a matter of opinion, but of fact. The trouble with the 
insurance business was simply that men had not come to 
realize what insurance could do for them and the vital part 
it could play in their lives. They were sometimes annoyed 
when urged to do what was wholly for their own good. 
Taking his own business career as an example, he declared: 


I did not know what life insurance really meant until my policies 
were falling due and the final payments had been made and I had a 
large sum of money with which I began to build my Philadelphia store. 
I would not have been prepared to start my building when I did, if I had 
not saved two and a half millions, little by little. I had not realized 
what I was doing! Life insurance is the savings bank if you choose to 
put it on the simplest, plainest basis. It is not only a savings bank, but 
it is collateral.+ 


*In the early 1890’s Wanamaker’s first notable statement in favor of large 
life insurance said: “Twenty years ago I had a capital of about a half mil- 
lion dollars. I then realized that a business man with a half million of 
capital and a million and a half of insurance on his life would have better 
credit than one with a half million capital and no insurance—so I took the 
insurance. I now find that trading on the credit it created has made more 
profit for me than if the money which went into insurance had gone directly 
into my business.” 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 233 


Wanamaker told the Fidelity agents, as he was in a posi- 
tion to do, that the large amount of collateral at his com- 
mand through his life-insurance savings had helped him 
more than once in times of stress. In 1895 he had spoken 
of the usefulness of large life insurance in the panic two 
years earlier. It was even more useful in the panic of 
1907. 

On November 29, 1918, Wanamaker wrote a letter to 
the “Association of Life Insurance Presidents Assembled 
in Twelfth Annual Session,” with permission to publish, in 
which he said that he never had got far in saving until 
he experienced the value of having found “a distinct and 
pleasing object for which to save” in the form of the pre- 
miums on policies constantly falling due. He reiterated 
that he could “never be grateful enough to those who so 
ingeniously taught me and influenced me to take out endow- 
ment policies which terminated when they could best aid me 
in carrying out new plans in my business. When this hap- 
pened I felt as if a gold mine had opened at my hand.” He 
wanted to go on record in his belief that life insurance had 
become the safest and best regulated business in the coun- 
try—“no longer an association of investors joined by agree- 
ment in an undertaking with possible risks, but distinctly an 
absolute contract that insures and at the same time becomes 
an assurance of actuality and results.” Therefore he 
believed that “the life-insurance companies are naturally 
the most practical savings banks for the people of the 
United States.” 

In the last decade of his life Wanamaker several times 
urged the value of life insurance in his store editorials. 
He begged people to avoid speculation and the foolish buy- 
ing of shares of stock in “undeveloped affairs.” He pointed 
out that “life insurance assures confidence; confidence begets 
credit; and credit makes profit,” giving his own experience 


234. JOHN WANAMAKER 


in business as proof of the statement. But he believed the 
best argument for life insurance—“the transcendent and 
insistent argument to every man’s conscience,” as he put it 
—to be proper provision for one’s own. This truth he 
stated in a store editorial thus: 


It is almost a crime to bring up a family in affluence and for its 
master or chief not to arrange his affairs so that they shall not be exposed 
to sudden and severe poverty in case of death, when, by forethought and 
the help of substantial insurance companies, he can put something aside 
out of his earnings for the mother and each child without being dishonest 
with his creditors. 


The same thought was again expressed more senti- 
mentally: 


From the day an honest man pays the first premium for life insurance, 
that first receipt of his gives a new impulse to his arm and new light 
to his eye and a new hope to his heart, and if it so be that he does not 
live to pay another premium he has lit a lamp in the house that will 
lighten it when the little family comes back from the grave they left wet 
with tears. 


Now that heavy insurance on the part of big business 
men, either directly by them or on their lives by the cor- 
porations they head, has become a commonplace of Ameri- 
can business life, Wanamaker’s réle of pioneer is readily 
grasped and accepted.* But he felt just as he felt about 
his savings bank venture, that there was still much to be 
done to educate the people as a whole to consider life insur- 
ance both as a moral obligation and as a sound business 
proposition. This explains the store editorials. It explains 
also the insurance encouragement and aid given to his 
employees, which he first thought of and launched in the 


**Leading life insurance companies state that John Wanamaker, by his 
repeated indorsement of the institution of American life insurance, has done 
more than any other one man to give this plan of systematic and organized 
thrift the standing it has to-day in the minds of business and professional 
men throughout the United States."—Eastern Underwriter, June 6, 1924. 


FOUNDATIONS OF EVERY MAN’S HOUSE 235 


1860’s, and in which he persisted despite discouragements 
throughout his business career. Shortly after the war he 
had a report made upon the working out of the govern- 
ment’s insurance plan for soldiers. When he read it, it 
dawned on him that elsewhere than in his own store family 
a distressingly large number of people simply do not see 
what is to their own advantage. He shook his head, and 
said with a laugh: “I had to be persuaded about life insur- 
ance. I guess everybody does. It’s funny how we have to 
be urged to do things for our own good that are so plain 
one wouldn’t think we could miss them.” 

The foundations of every man’s house are obvious. But 
are they? 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 


OT since 1892, when he was a member of the Cabi- 
net and his instinct of loyalty drove him to throw 
his heart into the unsuccessful campaign for the re-election 
of President Harrison, had Wanamaker taken so much 
interest in and devoted so much time to a presidential cam- 
paign as he gave to secure the re-election of William How- 
ard Taft in 1912. It marked his re-entry into national 
politics after ten years of what amounted virtually to com- 
plete abstention. We have seen how his reform fight in 
Pennsylvania inevitably forced him into the position of 
being an irregular. When Roosevelt became President 
because of McKinley’s assassination, almost at the beginning 
of McKinley’s second term, it did not suit him to have a 
factional fight going on in Pennsylvania. The great issue 
at stake he professed not to see, and he had never concealed 
his lack of regard for John Wanamaker, dating back to 
civil service disagreements in Washington when the youth- 
ful Roosevelt was a zealous commissioner and Wanamaker 
the shrewd and trusted adviser of Benjamin Harrison.* 
Wanamaker had helped McKinley in 1900, not only on 
the stump, but also by depositing $50,000 in a New York 
bank to be used for the prosecution of election frauds. In 
1904 he seems to have done nothing except make the contri- 
bution to the campaign fund that was expected of a promi- 
nent Republican. In the first Taft campaign, when New 
York was feeling pessimistic, Wanamaker issued to the 


* See above, vol. i, pp. 297-300, 325. 


236 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 237 


American business world a stirring pronouncement of his 
belief that New York was “on the eve of taking a great 
step upward.” He said that he was backing this convic- 
tion by increasing vastly his business expenditures at a time 
when other merchants, still under the spell of panic days, 
were retrenching. He declared that the common sense of 
the American people would put Taft into office, and that 
he was not going to wait until after election to prepare for 
“the coming of the new dawn.” 

On November 3, 1908, he wrote from his room in the 
Plaza Hotel that 


the streets all the way up and all about here are full of noisy people 
waiting for the election returns. One hears horns, rattles, whistles, and 
drums. There is great excitement as both Taft and Bryan are claiming 
victory. Of course it is Taft. But what a rupture and eruption there 
would be if by chance Bryan got in. It would mean more hard work 
ahead, more passing through the deep waters of last winter. 


And the next day he put down: 


The day after election and Taft is It. All the people seem to be 
hugging themselves because they have escaped Bryan. The day is dull 
and showery but there are a great many people around. Now, if the 
business world takes up business ways again calmly and earnestly, we may 
sail out on smooth seas to prosperous voyages. It will be such a com- 
forting thing to have the old times restored again and business coming 
in without oxen to pull it to us. We certainly have been through a lot. 
Our day’s sales now show increases here in New York in comparison 
with the panicky days of a year ago. But poor old Philadelphia— 
always a timid manufacturing center before elections—still has the 
cramps, to R. W.’s great and constant pain. 


On January 21, 1911, John Wanamaker was a guest of 
honor at the Pennsylvania Society’s dinner to President Taft 
at the Hotel Astor in New York. The President, deeply 
involved at the time in perplexing difficulties, was struck 
with the shrewdness and incisiveness of the Philadelphia 


238 JOHN WANAMAKER 


merchant’s comments on current affairs, as they sat side by 
side through the long dinner. ‘Therefore, when he was 
confronted with the problem of calling an extra session in 
event of failure of the Canadian reciprocity bill a few weeks 
later, he invited Wanamaker to spend a week-end at the 
White House. The press saw in the invitation a wise 
decision on the part of the President to seek the advice of 
an old Republican who was in no way connected with either 
the progressives or the stand-patters. The Washington 
correspondents noticed that from the time the former Post- 
master-General went to the White House from the train 
until he left to return to New York the President was con- 
stantly with him. They took a walk together; attended 
the Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday night; and occupied 
the proscenium box at the Belasco Theatre Sunday evening 
for the Salvation Army rally. An Associated Press des- 
patch said: 


There was never a time when a President of the United States stood 
more in need of advice not tinctured with any of the ideas of the antag- 
onistic elements in his own party than right now. . . . Everybody here 
seems to think that Mr. Wanamaker is probably the best man in the 
country to give unbiased and unprejudiced advice at a time when it is 
universally recognized that the Republican party is in sore straits. It is 
pointed out that Wanamaker is the one prominent Republican who has 
kept himself free from the entanglements of the opposing elements. 


President Taft gracefully recognized his indebtedness to 
Wanamaker and the esteem in which he held him by going 
to Philadelphia at the end of the year to make the dedica- 
tory address at the opening of the new Wanamaker store 
building—thus creating a precedent in American history.’ 

At the beginning of 1912 many newspapers and maga- 
zines, deprecating the inevitable split that seemed to be 


*A second visit was made to the Wanamaker store on April 25, 1918, 
when the former President, now Chief Justice, was introduced in the Grand 
Court and spoke in Egyptian Hall. 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 239 


ahead of the Republican party because of Roosevelt’s hos- 
tility to Taft, seriously considered whether it would not be 
possible to get the convention to discard political candi- 
dates altogether and nominate a business man for the Presi- 
dency. In these speculations and criticisms of existing 
conditions, Wanamaker’s name was frequently mentioned.’ 
He had no thought of seeking the Presidency for himself, 
but he did believe that it would be possible to organize 
throughout the country a strong movement of business men 
to save the party from internal political dissension. He 
felt, however, that Taft deserved a second term, and that 
there would be little hope of purchasing harmony and assur- 
ing victory in the November election if Roosevelt were 
allowed to veto the renomination of his successor in the 
Presidential office. The fanatical Wanamaker loyalty to 
the friend who had done something for him came to the 
front, as it always did when a friend needed Wanamaker’s 
help. Denying and ridiculing the rumors that he had the 
presidential bee in his own bonnet, Wanamaker declared: 


Taft stands head and shoulders above others who seek the office that 
he holds. It is only a great soul that makes a great man. ‘The man who 
can stand the misinterpretations that ‘Taft has stood of his work as Presi- 
dent has kingly stuff in him. 


So devoted was Wanamaker to Taft that he withdrew 
the Philadelphia store advertisement from the North Amer- 
ican in the middle of February because he had made an 
objection against what he regarded as offensive cartoons of 
the President. The North American was supporting 
Roosevelt. There were protests from Progressives all over 
the country, who were surprised at Wanamaker’s stand; 


*In Leslie’s Weekly for February 15, 1912, Mr. E. G. Simmons dis- 
cussed five business men mentioned for the Presidency. They were—in 
the order named—John Wanamaker, David R. Francis, John G. Shedd, 
former Governor Alva Adams of Colorado, and John Claflin, President of 
the H. B. Claflin Co. 


240 - - JOHN WANAMAKER 


and everybody was astonished, because the North American 
was owned by members of the Wanamaker family. Stick- 
ing to his guns and sturdily explaining his position, Wana- 
maker said: 


I am not in the position of my son Rodman, who has a restraining or 
controlling influence as an owner. I am in the very delicate position of a 
common citizen. The fact that I have spent a million and a half in 
advertising in your paper in the last fifteen years does not give me the 
right to say one single word, not one, and I think you believe that I do 
not want to do that. But I am coming to a place in my life where I 
believe that a different stand has to be taken by the newspapers regarding 
the President, whether it be Roosevelt, or Taft, or whoever it may be. 

Instinctively I detest newspaper cartoons that accentuate any man’s 
deformity or physical peculiarity in a gross and disgusting manner. ‘This 
feeling that I have always had is only accentuated by the fact that in 
this case it is the President of the United States. I remember that the 
North American is in the Carlton Club, in the big clubs in Paris and 
Berlin, and that foreign readers take the pictures of a leading journal 
of our country as representing popular attitude toward the ruler of the 
greatest nation in the world. I know that many men never read the 
newspaper—they simply see the pictures. You must remember that it 
stirs me to my very bones when I think of thousands of young people 
who see your cartoons and thus have less respect for dignitaries. Just 
think of the seeds of resentment, of disrespect, of anarchy, that pictures 
like this of our elected ruler excite in the minds of people who do not 
know what to think except by a picture. 


In the end, the editor admitted Wanamaker’s contention 
that “the President of the United States deserved a kind 
of consideration different from that shown to any other 
person in public life,” and promised not to make any more 
disagreeable cartoons about Taft. “Or about any man 
holding the office of President,” amended Wanamaker. 
When the editor assented, the contract for the renewal 
of advertising was signed.* To the end of his life Wana- 


* The quoted statement of Wanamaker’s views on cartooning the President, 
and the conversation that followed with the editor of the North American, 


are taken from a stenographic record that has been preserved in the private 
files, 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 241 


maker held that this action had in no sense been an attempt 
to influence the policy of the newspaper, but merely indi- 
cated a wholly proper attitude of a citizen of the United 
States toward the office of the chief magistrate. 

Wanamaker’s championship of Taft gave Senator Pen- 
rose furiously to think. Like Quay, twenty-four years 
earlier, he sought an interview, which led to the following 
letter: 


2032 WaLNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA, 
11 March, 1912, 6 ?. m. 


Dear Mr. PREsIDENT:— 


Mr. Stotesbury and I have been called upon by Senator Penrose and 
Mr. McNichol requesting us in your name to go to the June Convention. 

Senator Penrose told the writer that he would arrange with you for 
an interview to discuss carefully the serious and red-hot conditions now 
upon the country. Mr. Stotesbury representing the banking and I the 
business world (measurably) have had a conference to-day and we both 
believe that before we can give an answer as to the Nominating Con- 
vention (which answer must be given before next Saturday) we should 
go over the present situation with you as suggested by the writer and 
assented to by Senator Penrose. To avoid publicity, New York would 
be the best place to meet if your plans for this week admit of it. 

I have been ill at home for the past three weeks but will meet you 
in New York with Mr. Stotesbury any day and hour you name. Please 
advise me early, in your own best way. 


Yours truly, 
Joun WanaMAakER. 


The President’s answer was to telegraph Wanamaker to 
come to the White House the following day for luncheon. 
To this invitation Wanamaker responded by a long letter, 
which a confidential messenger took to Washington. He 
explained that while he “would follow Senator Penrose 
in any good cause he had in hand,” neither Mr. Stotesbury 
nor himself wanted any office. They did not care to be put 
in a position of being “simply servants of the old Pennsyl- 


24.2 JOHN WANAMAKER 


vania machine.” But they were willing to be his servants, 
and believed that they “could be of greatest service to your 
Campaign Committee, working for you in the business 
world in ways that no political party could work.” He 
pointed out that they were unwilling to be “called in to 
help a machine that has certainly been discredited so far as 
Philadelphia is concerned.” In conclusion, Wanamaker 
warned Taft that the newspaper reporters were hot on his 
trail, and that the conference had better be a secret one. 
Wanamaker was not after publicity, nor was Stotesbury; 
but they did want to help the party and its logical leader. 
President Taft did not feel that he could confer pri- 
vately with the two Philadelphians. He was in a precari- 
ous position—and his Progressive enemies were looking for 
opportunities to assail him. On the other hand, he knew 
that the old-line bosses, like Penrose, were peculiarly sensi- 
tive. So he repeated his invitation to the White House, 
and Wanamaker went over on Friday afternoon, March 15. 
In his diary he wrote: 


It is all different here in Washington, yet strangely enough its new- 
nesses do not disconcert me. In fact, as I rode up here in the President’s 
car, I thought I saw old familiar faces in passing. ‘The streets and the 
buildings are almost all as I left them twenty years ago. ‘The rains fell 
and roared upon me all the way down here. It was a regular Taft 
freshet. 


On the train on the way back the same evening, he added: 


The President asked me twice to stay all night, and there was a small 
dinner and a musicale afterward. But I preferred to return home and be 
in my bed and early at my office. 


Wanamaker brought back with him the President’s per- 
sonal request to Mr. Stotesbury and himself that they go 
as delegates to the nominating convention “because the 
President would like to have the business men of the coun- 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 243 


try represented in the convention.” He announced to the 
press that he had acceded to the President’s request, and 
that, although he had to go to Europe at his physician’s 
bidding, he would return in time for the convention because 


American patriotism was consecrated at its birth to the service of all 
the people. It rises to a higher level than the heedless following of an 
individual, however brilliant and admirable that man may be. Its oppor- 
tunity and its duty to-day is the calm and deliberate consideration of the 
issues before this nation, according to the principles to which centuries 
of experience have certified. And this includes the doing of those things 
which it is obviously wise and right to do, and in which we can see 
our way ahead; and to refuse to do those things which are visionary, 
experimental, and dangerous. 


The Progressive charges against the President, openly 
sponsored by Roosevelt, stirred Wanamaker deeply. When 
he sailed for Europe he sent back by the pilot boat a ring- 
ing manifesto that became known throughout the country 
and was called “the pilot letter.” It was a plea for the 
Republicans to stand together and a warning that if they 
did not do so, there would be a Democratic administration. 
This was his excuse for one of “the two million business 
men of whom almost all had been taught to confine them- 
selves to business and to leave questions of politics alone” 
to “step outside of my mercantile life to take this particular 
part in public affairs.” He deplored the lack of interest 
on the part of business men in the approaching presidential 
campaign, especially in the face of “the radical crises, the 
cries of demagogues, and the menace to the tariff.” He hit 
hard at the Democrats and Progressives alike for their 
announced intention of forcing on the country “unneces- 
sary political issues.” The country was already suffering 
more from “overlegislation than from lack of legislation. 
Multiplied statutes, if not enforced, give no relief, but 
positive harm.” He pointed out that the experience of 


244. JOHN WANAMAKER 


four years in the presidential office was in itself a recom- 
mendation for re-election, which should not be overlooked 
or discounted, and concluded with his profession of faith in 


Taft: 


I believe in his character, his capacity, his leadership. I believe that 
the experience he has had is a guarantee of better things. I have known 
him closely for twenty-two years and have absolute confidence in his 
integrity, honesty of purpose, and tremendous ability to cope with the 
legal questions that are puzzling the great minds of the interpreters of 
the law. I believe that he should be upheld in enforcing, without per- 
mitting persecution or betrayal, the sacred rights of all the people. He 
has not followed a will-o’-the-wisp, nor has he chased rainbows. Stead- 
fastly, with dignity, with effectiveness, with tireless effort, has he done 
his work. 


While Wanamaker was taking his cure at Marienbad it 
became evident to political observers that Taft could control 
the Chicago Convention, but that this might lead to a 
Roosevelt bolt. The family felt that it would be better 
for Wanamaker to remain in Europe and avoid the excite- 
ment and discomfort of Chicago in June. But Wanamaker 
cabled from Frankfort-on-Main on May 22 that he was 
“ready to fulfill the President’s request for his attendance 
at the convention unless he has better plans—only will want 
to know definitely his present mind.” Taft answered: 
“Tell Mr. Wanamaker I have the votes to nominate me, 
but I need him and I want him.” 

Passage was secured on the France. But when Wana- 
maker got to Havre, there was a sudden strike of seamen 
and firemen ten minutes before the sailing hour. Precious 
days were lost with the Compagnie Générale Transatlan- 
tique assuring the passengers on board that the steamer 
would leave at any minute. In desperation Wanamaker 
returned to Paris—just too late to get to the Tuesday sail- 
ing of the Lusitania. We find in his diary: 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 245 


Paris Office, 6 p. m. ‘Tuesday 6-11-12, in the rain, at Miss Harris’ 
desk while Paul talks with Mrs. Heeren on the phone. I have just 
got in—Paul missed me at the Station. I found that two of our buyers 
were booked on the ship and had to take one of their rooms 
engaged in May. We leave at 9:30 and go out on a tender when the 
Kaiser comes from Southampton. 6:40 p.m. How queer it was to come 
out of France and travel to Paris and make the new start when we should 
have been halfway over the ocean. 


The next day he wrote: 


On the train en route to boat 3 p.m. and running into a fog. The 
Nord Deutscher Lloyd put me into the same compartment on the train 
with Gordon Bennett and we are having a six or seven hour ride 
together. I hope he does not get tired of me. But I am pretty tired 
of myself for having to gossip so much. 


From the diary of this last transatlantic voyage—Wana- 
maker never went to Europe again—we take several pas- 
sages: 


Kaiser Wilhelm II]. June 15, 1912. Halfway toward the port of 
New York. I am so thankful to be well, though the day has been long 
and rainy, the sea rough, and many sick. I have been in my cabin most 
of the day writing something for the Convention in case I arrive too 
late to go to Chicago. I am not at all clear, now that my alternative 
must go, whether I would have any legal standing in the Convention, 
seeing that another has been recognized and enrolled in my place. 

When we get nearer the Western shores perhaps there will be Mar- 
conis, with information from Chicago that will throw some light on 
what can be done. Some young ladies on board are making up to me, 
but I am shy of them all, mamas included. All the time I have I give to 
gentlemen only. 

June 17. I have just had an interesting talk with Bennett. He has 
unbent very much to me and talked a lot about himself. He is 71 years 
old and lives on his yacht almost half of his time, where he has a crew 
of 110. He commands it himself. Has 9 staterooms, each with a bath, 
for his guests. Can coal enough to cross the ocean. Takes a doctor 
along. Has been all over the world by water. 

June 17. 9:30 p. m. Another wireless of welcome from the Phila. 


246 JOHN WANAMAKER 


staff and still later from R. W. saying a special train is ready for me, 
but I can decide nothing without knowing something of the status of 
things in Chicago. I believe we will land at dock between 7 and 8 
Wednesday a.m., and I may get to Chicago safer and as soon by a regular 
train if there is one. "There is a ball on the deck now. I am going up ~ 
to look in on it. 

9:30 p.m. Tuesday-6-18-12. The light at Sandy Hook looms up 
and in less than an hour we shall be at Quarantine, where R. W. has 
Marconied he will come for me. How I can get the baggage off I do 
not know, but perhaps it is all arranged by R. W. I will go straight on 
to Chicago if the train is ready. The boat is now slowing up. 


During the last day of the voyage Wanamaker was kept 
informed both of the progress of things at Chicago and of 
the arrangements for getting him out there by daily wire- 
less messages from his New York store. The following 
received in the morning is an illustration: 


Taft holding strong. Root wins first skirmish chairmanship. Press 
representatives desirous getting steamer for interview. Special waiting 


Jersey City. Everything right. 


Wanamaker did not quite understand the great interest 
that was aroused by his return. The special train waiting 
for him, of course, was spectacular, and good news. But he 
had not realized that while he was on the ocean Howard 
B. French, alternate to the Chicago Convention for dele- 
gate-at-large E. T. Stotesbury, had said that John Wana- 
maker had the backing of the big financial interests in 
New York and Philadelphia as compromise candidate 
between Taft and Roosevelt. Gordon Bennett got this bit 
of news in a wireless from the Herald. Wanamaker imme- 
diately wrote out a message of 1,138 words (which the 
North German Lloyd Company afterwards proudly stated 
was the longest private radiogram sent up to that time) 
reiterating his devotion to the President and his belief that 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 247 


his renomination alone would serve the interests of the 
country. 

From the White House Rudolph Forster had telephoned 
to Wanamaker’s office that the Secretary of the Treasury 
was going to issue a permit for John Wanamaker to get off 
the vessel at Quarantine. This was done. Rodman Wan- 
amaker met his father, rushed him by tug to Jersey City, 
and just an hour from the time he left the Kaiser Wil- 
helm II the elder Wanamaker was speeding to Chicago over 
the Pennsylvania Railroad. 

The run was made in eighteen hours and two minutes. 
By a curious coincidence, just as he entered the convention 
hall on the afternoon of June 19 his name was called in a 
poll involving Roosevelt and Taft. His answer was the 
first notice most of the delegates had of his arrival, and he 
received an ovation. Later he telegraphed his son: “Am 
invited to attend important conference to-night. Have good 
room. Taft vote increased 6. Strain tremendous. Odds 
favoring Taft. Send this to mother.” 

The convention was still in its preliminary organizing 
stage, with the Taft and Roosevelt forces struggling for 
control through the contests following challenges to state 
delegations. 


On June 20 Henry Clews telegraphed Wanamaker from 
New York: 


New York City, June 20-12 
Nominate Taft and Hadley. It will be a combination that will down 
all opponents in the field. The business interests of the nation will 
respond at once and will immediately commence to discount the election 
of the ticket the success of which, with a bountiful harvest as now prom- 


ised, will make a record-breaking year of prosperity for the entire 
country. 


The next morning he received the following: 


248 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Tue Wuite House, Wasuincton, D. C., June 21. 
JoHn WaNAMAKER, 
BiacksToNE Horeu. 
It will give me great pleasure if you will do me the honor to second 
my nomination in the convention if you can do so, Will you kindly 
advise Mr. Hilles accordingly. 


Wo. H. Tart. 


When the motion was made late in the afternoon of 
June 21 to make the temporary organization a permanent 
one, the Roosevelt delegates staged a demonstration that 
lasted for half an hour. It was expected to be their last 
gasp. For the final composition of the delegates indicated 
that the Taft organization was in control, and that all that 
had to be done was simply to go through the formality of 
nominating speeches, in which Wanamaker was to have a 
part. But the Progressive element immediately served 
notice upon leading members of the convention that the 
renomination of Taft would have a disastrous effect. It 
was in reality, of course, political blackmail, but it took 
the form of an earnest plea for a compromise candidate. 
This gave rise again to the mention of Wanamaker’s name 
as the strongest candidate among “representative business 
men.” Early in the morning of June 22, Wanamaker was 
waked by an urgent telephone message, “If your name is 
presented to the convention, we have friendly delegates who 
will vote for you.” An immediate answer was requested in 
order that the affair could be arranged at breakfast. 

Wanamaker’s refusal was unhesitating. He was not to 
be led into any maneuver to divide the Taft forces. And 
he felt that Sherman must again have second place on the 
ticket. This stand took away the last hope of preventing 
the issue between Taft and Roosevelt from being decided 
in any other way than a direct roll call in the convention. 
Wanamaker worked loyally and effectively to secure Taft’s 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 249 


nomination. Senator Harding presented Taft’s name. 
Wanamaker followed Harding. In his brief address he 
declared that business men were not disposed to make 
investments while political conditions were so unsettled, and 
he denounced the Roosevelt supporters in one terse sen- 
tence: 


American patriotism must surely rise at this time to a higher level than 
the blind and heedless following of any individual or of any individual’s 
policy, however brilliant such may be. 


Raising his voice above the groans and catcalls that 
greeted this statement, he cried out that “radical changes 
in the administration mean further depression and losses to 
labor” and that “uncertainty and instability in the conduct 
of public affairs create distrust and demoralization of busi- 
ness.” His peroration sounded a note that was taken up 
years later by Mr. Coolidge. Wanamaker’s words, “a res- 
toration of faith in the Constitution,” became the slogan in 
the campaign of 1924.” 

We are able to give the story of the day in Wanamaker’s 
own words. On Sunday morning he wrote: 


I am too tired to go to church! What do you think of that for me! 
It was one o’clock before I got to bed. ‘The Convention sat from 
10 A.M. to 10:30 P.M., and I was not once out of the Hall. The strain 
of the four days was extreme. ‘The uncertainty of the outcome, the 
shadow of a bolt of the Rooseveltians, and the bitterness and strife of the 
delegates on his side and their obstructions to everything done in the 
Convention, was wearing and trying for the twelve and a half continuous 
hours, especially when added to the eight and ten hour sessions of the 
previous days. At any hour the Convention might have broken up 
through the withdrawal of the opposition. As it was, the original pro- 

*See J. Hampton Moore, Roosevelt and the Old Guard, p. 265. Mr. 
Moore was president of the National Republican League, then Congressman 
from Pennsylvania, and later Mayor of Philadelphia. In his spirited account 
of the Chicago Convention Mr. Moore calls attention to the fact that 


John Wanamaker was the first Republican to make “defense of the Consti- 
tution” a Republican campaign issue. 


250 JOHN WANAMAKER 


gram was carried through. Mr. Taft got by narrowly with a vote of 
561—a margin of 19—542 being required for a majority. Vice-Presi- 
dent Sherman was slated from the first for renomination. 

It was considered as best politics for Taft not to change the old ticket 
in any way. If there had not been enough votes on the first ballot to 
elect, changes in the ticket would have been possible. But by hard 
sledding the original slate was put through. So there we are. 

Now comes the fearful struggle. It seems to me almost impossible to 
elect the Taft ticket or Roosevelt, who jumped into the arena last night 
at midnight, and with the 343 delegates who refused to vote in the 
Convention nominated himself as a candidate and arranged to call a 
convention in August to organize a new Republican party. I do not 
believe Roosevelt can be elected, but by dividing the party he will pre- 
vent the election of Taft and open the way for a Democrat. 


Wanamaker got away from Chicago on Sunday after- 
noon. Interviewed on his return to Philadelphia, he 
declared that it was “like warming up old coffee to discuss 
the convention,” with “the Democratic Convention a fresh 
cup on the breakfast tables to-morrow.” He noted the 
absence of “successors to the old mighty men of Republi- 
can conventions, such as Blaine and Mark Hanna.” He 
continued: 


The masters of the hour were Elihu Root, whose dignity and coolness, 
unruffled good nature and humor, in spite of great provocation, held the 
reins, taking care always to drive fairly and safely; Fairbanks, President 
Butler of Columbia University; Senators Burton and Hemingway; and 
William B. McKinley. There were many good men present who had 
never been to a convention before, and who, like myself, wanted to do 
their best but did not know how. 

A colored delegate, of which there were sixty-six in the Convention, 
who had not taken part, said he had waited for the zod/ogical moment. 
The noise, confusion and roars of the men who were in some degree 
accidents as delegates, kept up the features of a zodlogical garden for 
hours of each day. To be sure, the strain was very great for everyone, 
with the threats of bolting and riot by some of the Indians who were in 
the game to continue the excitement. ‘The sessions were all long, and 
lasted twelve and a half hours at one sitting. 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 251 


The platform that was adopted is in many respects better than any 
former platform of any convention. It touches the problems of the day 
in a practical way and means what it says upon the subjects under discus- 
sion. I am sure the members of the Committee on Resolutions who 
framed the platform were intense in their sincerity to do something that 
would give standing room for the entire American people. 


At the age of seventy-five it was hardly surprising that 
the “high jinks,” as he himself called them, of a dash 
across the ocean, hurrying to Chicago by special train, put- 
ting all his heart into the convention, and then jumping 
back to Philadelphia and to work, could have had no after- 
math. One of his bad colds caught him, and when he went 
to Bretton Woods, in the White Mountains, to join his 
wife, he found himself in for a long stage of illness. This 
prevented him from attending the President’s reception at 
the White House on July 8 when, as President Taft put it, 
he and his friends “went into conference on the state of the 
Union.” On July 29 Taft wrote to Bretton Woods: 


I am very grateful to you, my dear Mr. Wanamaker, for all that 
you have done for me, and for your willingness to do more. I shall 
not hesitate to call upon you when you are restored physically. I hope 
your recovery may be both speedy and complete. 


And again on September 18 the President wrote from 
Beverly, Mass.: 


I am very sorry to hear of your physical condition, both because of 
your personal discomfort and because it deprives you of the opportunity 
to help us in this fight. I still hope that you may be able to give us the 
benefit of your judgment to put into operation the movement among the 
business men. 


At the beginning of August Wanamaker had accepted the 
invitation of Chairman Hilles to be one of the sixteen mem- 
bers of a National Advisory Committee, and he had helped 
to organize and had contributed to the printing and circu- 


252 JOHN WANAMAKER 


lation of pamphlets by the Taft and Sherman Business 
Men’s Committee. But he could not speak anywhere, and 
he had to restrict his correspondence. We find no letter to 
the National Committee until September 26, when he wrote 
to Chairman Hilles that “inasmuch as direct interference on 
the part of the employer is generally resented by the 
employee,” the National Committee should ask business 
men to form committees of their own employees to urge 
upon their fellow-workmen “the importance of the Repub- 
lican policy regarding tariff legislation not being interfered 
with.” He added that he had given this advice to Hanna 
in 1896, and Hanna had appointed a special bureau for this 
“missionary work” in Chicago. 

Wanamaker’s great contribution to the 1912 campaign 
was the two letters given to the press on October 2 and 
October 28. 

The first was addressed “To the merchants and business 
men of the United States,” and was published all over the 
country. Wanamaker warned against free trade; recalled 
the Wilson tariff and the panic of 1893; asserted that the 
Republican party “can and will rightly revise the tariff”; 
and said that the country wanted no “whirligig administra- 
tion of an unbalanced President.” This first letter resulted 
in a deluge of letters of approval and condemnation. Wil- 
liam T. Tilden, President of the Union League of Phila- 
delphia, declared that it sounded the virile note of the 
campaign; and the Republican National. Committee sent 
the letter in full, in plate form, to 3,000 newspapers. 

The Democratic National Committee, in turn, circulated 
two answers to Wanamaker, one by E. A. Filene, of Boston, 
and the other by W. G. McAdoo, of New York. McAdoo 
went into the question of panics, and denied Wanamaker’s 
argument that they were due to the tariff revisions of Dem- 
ocratic administrations. McAdoo stated: 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 253 


I admire his genius and personality, but deplore his lack of vision. 
He says himself that he is not a manufacturer, and this is painfully evi- 
dent in his letter. Were he as familiar with industrial conditions as 
he is fluent about panics, he would speak with less confidence and more 
weight. 


The second letter, released on October 28, 1912, was 
addressed to ‘‘my friends of fifty years, the men of the little 
kingdom of commerce, numbering upward of ten million 
strong within the United States.” Wanamaker went into 
the reasons for the panics of 1893 and 1907 once more, 
with great detail, and attempted to answer his critics. He 
suggested a new Cabinet post—Secretary of Manufactures, 
Tariff and Customs—thus relieving “the heavily loaded 
Treasury Department.” The letter bristled with epigrams, 
such as: 

So far it seems that the cry for liberation is but a howl for power. 

The Constitution has been tried and is not found wanting. 

Can those who pay little or no taxes be the best judges of what is 
to the country’s good? 


A tariff panic is worse than any other because it is the death blow to 
industry and labor. 

Will America ever be obliged to enact a poor rate tax, as in foreign 
countries, to take care of the unemployed? If we follow the direction of 
Baltimore we shall head that way. 

I firmly believe that whoever fails to vote the Republican ticket will 
league himself against the permanent interests of the working people. 

A properly adjusted tariff is the only certain foundation of business 
prosperity and of contented home life in the United States. 


The second Wanamaker broadside worried the Demo- 
cratic National Committee. Josephus Daniels, chairman of 
the Publicity Bureau, got William C. Redfield to make an 
answer to Wanamaker, point by point, which was spread 
over the country on the Saturday before election, with the 
imprint of the Democratic National Committee.* In his 


* Wilson rewarded both Daniels and Redfield by giving them places in his 
cabinet. 


254 JOHN WANAMAKER 


covering telegram to newspaper editors Daniels charged 
Wanamaker with having spread the impression that “the 
election of Woodrow Wilson would be followed by a 
‘panic? and ‘soup kitchens.’ On the West coast Claus A. 
Spreckels was enlisted to answer Wanamaker. The Spreck- 
els letter, which the Democratic National Committee sent 
to every newspaper west of the Mississippi, stated that 
Wanamaker did not “think clearly” and was not “an econo- 
mist.” | 

The question of a protective tariff’s role in the prosperity 
of the United States is one that will never be solved so 
long as it is put before the people and is considered by poli- 
ticlans as a party issue. Wanamaker was certainly not an 
economist. Nor were those who answered him. What 
theorists had to say on one side or the other would not 
have won headlines in the newspapers. If, as David H. 
Lane, the veteran Philadelphia politician wrote, E. A. 
Filene’s answer to Wanamaker was “an attempt to refute 
experience by prediction,” it is also true that Wanamaker 
himself may have failed to read rightly the lessons of his 
own long business career. However that may be, his pro- 
nouncement of the tariff issue as the dominant issue in the 
campaign was widely approved by Republicans and made 
the Democrats uneasy for the first time since the Roosevelt 
bolt. 

The tariff issue—at the best—was an academic question, 
and aroused no bitterness. It was quite otherwise when 
Wanamaker described Roosevelt as “a madman trying to 
wrest the Presidency from the man who, in all fairness, 
should have Roosevelt’s support,” and when he declared 
that “Theodore Roosevelt should prefer to have his right 
hand cut off rather than to have penned the things he has 
written against Republicanism.” On the very day of this 
speech Roosevelt was shot in Milwaukee. By telephone, 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1ro12 255 


by wire, and by mail came protests to Wanamaker’s office. 
One friend sent a copy of a card gotten out by the Phila- 
delphia Wanamaker store, at the time of the thirty-second 
anniversary six years before, eulogizing Roosevelt, and 
marked it, “Lest we forget.” Another wrote: “Say, John, 
you had better keep out of that political pot, or you'll get 
burnt.” Others were puzzled, and there are thoughtful 
letters on file, pointing out that Wanamaker’s past record 
in politics should have made him sympathetic to the Bull 
Moosers. 

Some friends feared what was probably true, that per- 
sonal friendship for Taft and too blind devotion to the 
Republican party had prevented Wanamaker from seeing 
what Roosevelt and his supporters were driving at. But, 
just as ten years before Roosevelt did not comprehend the 
significance and far-reaching importance of the great princi- 
ples for which Wanamaker had been valiantly contending 
in Pennsylvania, in 1912 Wanamaker certainly failed to 
realize that in the Bull Moose movement there was a high 
political ideal of which Roosevelt, in this last campaign of 
his career, was the sincere exponent.’ It was a tragic fatal- 
ity that these two men should at different times have so 
completely misunderstood each other. 

Wanamaker, however, saw only two things—that he 
might help a friend and that he might save the country 
from disaster that he felt would inevitably follow a drastic 


*In his Twenty-five Years: 1892-1916, (ii, 139-140) Lord Grey publishes 
a letter from Rooseyelt, dated November 15, 1912, in which there occurs 
this striking passage: “We Progressives were fighting for elementary social 
and industrial justice, and we had with us the great majority of the practical 
idealists of the country. But we had against us both the old political organi- 
zations, and 99 per cent of the corporate wealth of the country, and there- 
fore the great majority of the newspapers. Moreover, we were not able to 
reach the hearts of the materialists, or stir the imagination of the well- 
meaning, somewhat sodden, men who lack wisdom and prefer to travel in a 
groove. We were fought by the Socialists as bitterly as by the representa- 
tives of the two old parties, and this for the very reason that we stand 
equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob.” 


256 JOHN WANAMAKER 


reduction of the tariff. And he was confirmed in what he 
saw by three letters from President Taft during the month 
of October. On October 16, William Howard Taft wrote: 


I cannot tell you how much you have helped in the matter of bring- 
ing about a revolution of feeling on the general issues and a movement 
toward me by the business men of the country, and those wage-earners 
who have intelligence and discrimination enough to understand the basis 
of prosperity. 


Again on October 21: 


I want to thank you for the splendid work you are doing for the 
success of the Republican party in the approaching election. I thank 
you not for myself alone, but for the people at large who have so much 
to lose, so little to gain, from a change of Administration. . . . I cannot 
understand how any American voter can fail to see that by throwing 
away his vote on a third party, or by voting to put the Democrats in 
power, in the White House and in Congress, he is as surely courting 
disaster as is the small child playing with matches. And so, Mr. Wana- 
maker, far above any personal consideration, I am grateful to you and 
to all who, like you, are helping the Republican cause this year. 


And on October 28: 


I have read what you say in the morning paper. I cannot conceive 
of any statements from any other source that will so rouse the business 
community as your forcible and illuminating statements. 


That the President’s opinion of the value of Wana- 
maker’s services was shared by other prominent Republi- 
cans became evident when Vice-President Sherman died 
a week before election. The Washington correspondents 
of the New York Times and New York Herald both 
telegraphed on October 31 that influential members of 
the Republican National and Advisory Committees were 
impressed with the wisdom of giving to Wanamaker the 
party’s nomination for second place on the ticket. It had 
been intimated at the White House that Wanamaker was 
acceptable to the President. On November 1 Congressman 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912, 257 


J. Hampton Moore, Pennsylvania State Chairman of the 
Republican Congressional Committee, wrote to National 
Chairman Hilles suggesting that the National Committee 
be immediately convened for the purpose of nominating 
John Wanamaker as the party’s candidate for Vice-Presi- 
dent. 

The resolution of the Chicago Convention had given 
this power to the National Committee. But it was not 
essential to substitute a new name for Sherman’s before the 
election, because under the Constitution only the Electoral 
College is chosen by the people. Had the Republican 
party carried a majority of the Electoral College in Novem- 
ber, it would have been possible to indicate a new vice- 
presidential candidate at any time before the Electoral 
College met. The time was too short to substitute another 
name on the ballots throughout the country. Wanamaker 
telegraphed Taft that “infinitely better for the East would 
be Justice Hughes, who would help to carry New York 
and other states, while for us in Pennsylvania the name of 
Governor Edwin S. Stuart would add thousands of votes 
to the Taft ticket.” But he heartily concurred in the deci- 
sion to wait until after election, and wrote to his friends: 


I regard the talk about the Vice-Presidency like the south wind, which 
I gratefully accept, but without any further meaning for my life. 


Of course it is always wise to fight and hope. But Wan- 
amaker was too well informed to have believed in even the 
remote possibility of Taft’s re-election. Gordon Bennett 
had told him that there was not “the ghost of a chance.” 
In his diary we find, on November 6: 

Well, the stormy war is settled. How hateful to many states to drive 


them off from their old party of glorious history, and rather than trust 
themselves to Nero Roosevelt, throw in their lot with the untariffsafe 


258 | JOHN WANAMAKER 


Democrats. Pity of Pities. Now then—after the next 4th of March 
look out for squalls. 


And to the successful candidate he wired: 


There is a citizenship above party and an old personal friendship 
for you that calls out this expression of good will with the assurance 
of my earnest support for all good work you do as President of our great 
country. 


Ten days later Wanamaker went from New York to 
Philadelphia in the President’s car, and this gave rise to 
gossip that he would be appointed to succeed the late White- 
law Reid as Ambassador to Great Britain until the Wilson 
inauguration “as a compliment to a distinguished citizen.” 
Wanamaker denied the rumor. President Taft made no 
appointment, and felt that he ought to leave even the set- 
tlement of international questions of pressing importance, 
such as Mexico, to his successor. 

The last mention of the presidential campaign of 1912— 
and the disappointment it brought—is on March 4, 1913, 
when Wanamaker wrote: 

The first entry under the reign of a Democratic President. May 


it be happy and prosperous for the country! But I am unpatriotic 
enough to want a habitation in Sicily or Italy for the next four years! 


CHAPTER XVIII 
Ee os bOR beta ly) 


HE title of this chapter speaks volumes. It was John 
Wanamaker’s term for his employees. From the first 
days of Oak Hall he told those who worked for him that 
they represented him. In whatever capacity they served, 
_ they came into contact with customers, or had in their hands 
the interests of customers; and upon how they treated cus- 
tomers depended the merchant’s most precious asset, good 
will. ‘The first fifteen years of my business life,” Wana- 
maker once said, “were largely devoted to building up a 
sales force that understood and expressed my business prin- 
ciples, and ever since it has been my principal preoccupa- 
tion. The Store family is myself multiplied thousands 
fold.” 

When we recall the story of the early days and of the 
development of Oak Hall and the first Chestnut Street 
store, and when we turn back to Wanamaker’s talk to his 
people on the opening day of the Grand Depot, we realize 
how true this statement is." Surrounding himself exclu- 
sively with the Wanamaker quality of helpers was of vital 
importance. As the business grew and hundreds became 
thousands, the problem was more difficult. But Wanamaker 
solved it because he knew that it was a problem, and because 
he made it his business to know how his people represented 
him. He felt that he could never afford to neglect any 
opportunity for personal contact with all the members of 


* See above, vol. i, pp. 168-9. 
259 


260 JOHN WANAMAKER 


the store family. He studied the human material factor 
in storekeeping with the minute care with which he studied 
merchandise, display, advertising, and all forms of service 
to customers. He was able to express himself in his 
buildings and their stocks, and to create an atmosphere ~ 
of personality in his business, because of the discriminating 
selection of his employees and of the esprit de corps he was 
able to instill and sustain in the store family. He knew 
this, and he never tired saying it. 

The first employees and associates were friends or friends 
of friends or came to him with personal recommendations 
from friends. He knew all about them and their home 
life. He watched them, and if they did not fit in they 
went elsewhere. Upon this nucleus he built his personnel, 
considering no applicant that “would not feel at home in 
the store family.” His men and boys had to have what 
he called early in his career “essential qualities’—honesty, 
loyalty, good taste, enthusiasm, and native intelligence. 
When women began to seek employment in shops after 
the Civil War, a decade passed before Wanamaker could 
use many of them; for until 1877 he dealt in men’s and 
boys’ wear. The new kind of store, branching out into 
different fields, most of which had to do exclusively with 
women, led him to begin to add to the store family more 
and more women. It was difficult to get the right kind, 
nd he welcomed those who came from the homes of his 
men employees or who were recommended by them. He 
insisted that they have the same background of home envi- 
ronment as his men. 

General storekeeping demands an unusually high class 
of helpers. They cannot be taken on like factory hands or 
like clerks whose work is done behind the scenes in large 


*His habit of going out “on the floor” aided greatly in the contact. 
See above, vol. ii, pp. 36, 45; and below, p. 443. When he was in his office 
he was always accessible to employees. 


THEY STORE FAMILY 261 


corporations and wholesale houses. Because they are always 
in contact with the public there must be back of them homes 
in which have been instilled habits of personal cleanliness 
and fastidiousness and taste in dress; they must know how 
to speak English, if not without accent, at least idiomatically 
and with attention to grammar; and they must have the 
courtesy and good manners that are learned only at home. 
These standards, set for men and women alike when the 
new kind of store threw open-its doors in 1877, were main- 
tained throughout the years that followed. But as the busi- 
ness grew beyond the dreams of its founder and the little 
family became a veritable army, finding recruits became 
increasingly difficult. 

During the first decade of the rise of the general store, 
had the specialty shops been put out of business, as was often 
charged, Wanamaker and other general storekeepers would 
have had the pick of trained helpers who knew how to 
handle different lines and who had lost their jobs through 
the failure of the small storekeeper to compete with “the 
octopus.” But only those specialty storekeepers who failed 
to study and adjust themselves to new conditions went out 
of business; others took their places. There was no glut of 
trained salesmen and saleswomen on the market, and the 
problem of personnel was the hardest the developers of 
general stores had to solve. Those who applied for posi- 
tions in the new kind of store during the decade from 1877 
to 1887 contained a fair percentage of applicants acquainted 
with retail merchandising and able to handle goods over the 
counter. After 1887 adding to the sales force in any other 
way than by getting young people and training them was 
not only an annoyance, but was also harmful to the interests 
of the business. Frequently there were people who had 
all that could be desired in a cultural sense, and whose 
recommendations were splendid, but they were not fitted 


262 JOHN WANAMAKER 


for anything in particular and wanted a job simply because 
they had to work for a living and the general store seemed 
to be the line of least resistance for the unskilled and inex- 
perienced worker.” 

By the time the store family in Philadelphia reached 
three thousand, which was in the early 1880’s, Wanamaker 
felt the imperative necessity of establishing contributory 
agencies within the store, not only for helping his people 
put a firm financial foundation under their feet by savings 
and by provision for illness and death, but also for school- 
ing and for special training and discipline.” Community 
interests, social and economic, led to contact and co-opera- 
tion among members of the store family outside business 
hours. Wanamaker did not often take the initiative—he 
was not a paternalist; but he hailed with enthusiasm and 
satisfaction, and did his part to help along, every new 
organization. The societies and clubs contributed to increase 
the good qualities and effectiveness of the store family as 
much as to its health and happiness. 

But Wanamaker felt rightly that these agencies would be 
helpful only if they had good material to work on. In 
employing people he remembered his own constant cry to 
those responsible for the merchandise, “You’ve got to have 

* When the New York store force was being organized in 1896, Mr. Ogden 
said that it was pathetic to realize how many of the applicants were without 
special qualifications for any particular branch of the business; to one man 
or woman who knew how to do some one thing, there were at least fifty 
who stated in their applications that they were willing to do anything. It 
was not that they were the jack-of-all-trades type, but that they had never 
had any training or experience in retail merchandising. 

Wanamaker expressed this thought in the foreword to the Wélliamson 
School Annual in 1913 as follows: “The world seems to be filled with men 
who can do ‘’most anything. And it is not exaggerating to say that 
employers have more difficulty in facing this class of labor than any other— 
frequently with small satisfaction to both parties. It often happens that the 
man who says he can do ‘’most anything’ turns out to be the man who 
cannot do anything specific.” 


* For savings fund, building and loan associations, and life insurance, see 
vol. ii, chap. xvi; for mercantile education in the store see vol. ii, chap. xix. 


THE STORE FAMILY 263 


the goods!” So with younger as well as with older recruits, 
he tried to see that only those worth educating and training 
were admitted to the store family. His kind heart often 
made him take on and keep inefficient employees. But as 
a general rule he remembered—and asked his associates to 
remember—the proverb about the sow’s ear and the silk 
purse. 

The result of constant watchfulness in recruiting was the 
maintenance of the homogeneity of the store family in Phil- 
adelphia despite its growth. In New York Wanamaker 
began his mercantile career when there were still left men 
and women of the Stewart period and when it was possible, 
though not easy, to recruit a fine type of young people. 
And in choosing and handling personnel there was behind 
him thirty-five years of experience. In both cities, then, 
Wanamaker succeeded in building up a great organization 
of men and women, boys and girls, devoted to him per- 
sonally, imbued with his ideas of service and courtesy, and 
with the intelligence and training to represent him worthily 
to the customers. 

The homogeneity was a necessity. Without it Wana- 
maker could not have created the atmosphere that came to 
be associated distinctively with his stores, and he could not 
have made many thousands co-operate with him in creating 
and increasing and retaining a good will that was matchless 
in the mercantile field. 

Every employer of labor is eager for good material. He 
tries his best to get it. But factories, wholesale establish- 
ments, and offices of large corporations, where the work is 
mechanical to a large extent and where the workers do not 
come into personal contact with clients, are not dependent 
upon how their employees represent them. Wanamaker 
was. He had to find a certain kind of people to work for 
him, or he could not have begun and developed his mer- 


264. JOHN WANAMAKER 


chandising principles. What he needed he succeeded in 
finding. ‘The limitation in qualified applicants handicapped 
the employment department. But it prevented, after the 
flood of the foreign-born, any serious modification in the 
racial and cultural background of the store family. 

For certain kinds of work, such as running elevators and 
restaurant service, the best class of colored people was 
employed." The rest of the vast army, in cities the charac- 
ter of whose population changed radically during his life- 
time, Wanamaker kept dominantly of northern European 
stock. It was as remarkable a feat as any of those that 
won him laurels. At the beginning he had his Bethany 
associations to thank for being able to do it. Later he was 
able to introduce educational features and to offer condi- 
tions of work that appealed with peculiar force to the kind 
of people he wanted in his employ. 

Gathered from a background of long residence in Amer- 
ica and coming from homes where “the fear of God, order, 
and industry reigned” (we are quoting Wanamaker), the 
people that surrounded him were of English, Scotch, Irish, 
German—and to a lesser extent Scandinavian and French— 
forbears. These men and women shared his standards of 
truthfulness, his abhorrence of deceit, and his contempt for 


* The colored employees of John Wanamaker organized in New York in 
1911, and in Philadelphia a year later. They called themselves the Robert 
Curtis Ogden Association, in honor of the man who had done so much for 
their race and whom they had been proud to call one of their bosses. The 
New York Club made a place for itself in musical circles, with its jubilee 
singers, chorus, quartette, band, and orchestra. It gained more than local 
prominence by its relay team and sprint runners. The Philadelphia Club, 
much to Wanamaker’s delight, developed a crack band, for which Wana- 
maker provided a professional leader, who gives full time to teaching 
music in the store and training the men. ‘The chorus gives recitals, The 
band plays in the organ loft every week, and has won the Rodman Wana- 
maker cup for colored bands twice, once with 15th N. Y. Regiment Band 
as runner up, and another time in competition with the Jack Thomas Band 
of Baltimore and the Elks Band of New York. The associations have held 
dances in the stores, and their annual picnics are attended by thousands. 
Wanamaker enjoyed going to the Ogden Club entertainments, and when he 
could not get there he wrote letters which they prize highly. 


TELEY STORE FAMILY 265 


the sloven and slacker. They knew the things that Wana- 
maker wouldn’t do; for they wouldn’t do them themselves. 
They understood the meaning of the old motto: “Nodlesse 
oblige.” 

In the early days of the general store Wanamaker gave 
personal attention to applications for jobs. He interviewed 
the applicants, with an associate by his side, and trained his 
aide to size up people. A pretty girl, whose dainty com- 
plexion would set off any veiling mesh, wanted to sell veils. 
Without hesitation she was refused. After she went out 
Wanamaker said: ‘A finger showed through her glove, and 
bits of silk or ravelings hung from her petticoat below her 
dress. We don’t want a careless girl handling our stock. 
She would not keep the veilings in order any more than 
she keeps the rents sewed in her gloves and her skirt lining.” 
Invariably, in a case like this where there was slovenliness, 
Wanamaker laid the fault to lack of home training. 

To one who wrote, asking what were the qualifications 
for a position at the Grand Depot, Wanamaker answered: 
“Conscience, brains, manners.” Possession of the last qual- 
ity could be pretty well gauged in an interview, and he was 
willing to assume possession of the first from the recom- 
mendations and the answers to questions. As for brains, 
one had to wait and see. 

Wanamaker expected a lot of everybody. He never 
seemed surprised or especially gratified when members of 
his store family were doing things exceptionally well. He 
believed that a man’s best was no more than he ought to 
do all the time; and when people were given responsibility 
it was taken for granted that they would always “hit the 
bull’s eye.” * They would not have been chosen otherwise. 
Wanamaker said: 


* Isaac D. Shearer was put into the lower Chestnut Street store as financial 
man when the business was launched in 1869. Shortly after the opening, 
one of John Wanamaker’s brothers gave a sight draft for goods to the 


266 JOHN WANAMAKER 


One who has the faculty for right selection of responsible subordi- 
nates needs also that wise sense of justice and appreciation which accords 
unstinted scope of action and generous recognition of results. 


Wanamaker had a genius for delegating authority and 
for “according unstinted scope of action.” His “wise sense 
of justice” taught him early in life that men put on their 
mettle and made responsible for big things in the business 
should have the joy of a free hand. “Use your own judg- 
ment”? was the response that did more than any other one 
thing to establish the esprit de corps of the Wanamaker 
store family. 

On the other hand, when most people showed only medi- 
ocre ability, Wanamaker did not storm around and berate 
them for their mistakes. He was as quick to accept as he 
was to detect limitations. He was marvelously patient with 
the occasional stupidity of the ordinary run of folks. For 
instance, when he was showing a Japanese visitor around the 
store, he overheard an aisle man misdirecting a customer. 
He stopped and called his attention to the error. The 
Japanese afterward expressed surprise that Wanamaker had 
not scolded the man; for he had observed the usual way of 
Occidentals in handling the mistakes of others. 

“T have no time to scold,” answered Wanamaker, “and 
I learned thirty years ago that it was foolish to scold. I 
have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations with- 
out fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to dis- 
tribute generously the gift of intelligence.” 

There was a flash of approval and admiration in the eyes 
of the visitor. He promptly urged upon the American 


amount of $5,000, and forgot to tell Shearer about it. When it was pre- 
sented, John Wanamaker simply said, “That is up to you, Mr. Shearer.” 
Shearer had to find the money—without help from anyone. More than a 
month later John Wanamaker mentioned it for the first time. “By the way,” 
he said, “what became of that sight draft?” Shearer answered, “I met 
it,’ without telling how. Wanamaker commented, “I knew you would,” 
and did not then or afterward inquire how. 


COB STORE (FAMILY 267 


merchant a visit to the Far East, assuring him that he would 
be appreciated as a philosopher. 

Wanamaker’s self-control and acceptance of others’ limi- 
tations, however, had in it nothing of condescension. Never 
in his life did Wanamaker “My man” any one. “Pride 
goeth before a fall” was a favorite text of his; and he once 
said that pride was a mantle to cover ignorance or inferi- 
ority. It is natural for men of like economic position and 
of like intellectual equipment to seek and find their enjoy- 
ment in one another’s company. But Wanamaker seemed 
to be sincerely friends with everybody. The possession of 
money and power—even the possession of brains—made lit- 
tle impression upon him. He liked people for themselves, 
and his best friends were those who liked him for himself. 
His friends could be anything or nothing in the business 
and intellectual world; and he thought none the less of 
those who did not possess the qualities that made for suc- 
cess, so long as they were loyal and enthusiastic in their 
work. Those of his store family who knew him well—and 
they were legion who thought that they did—were sure that 
his interest in them was not measured by their attainments or 
their place in the store; and they loved him for it. Working 
for him meant partnership with him in maintaining the prin- 
ciples he had instilled into them. They would never leave 
him. They didn’t just have a “job”; theirs was a real 
Career.) 

* Thousands of letters in the files bear witness to this. The most striking 
testimony, however, is in the record of length of service attained by the 
Philadelphia store, which, while it may not be unique, is certainly unusual 
in the United States. Many hundreds who came as boys and girls and who grew 
up with the business never quit to go to any other place, and grew gray in 
the service of the store. One old employee wrote in 1909: “Your thought- 
fulness in providing for the pensioning of your old employees has given me 
the enjoyment of a fixed income sufficient to take care of me for the little 


time of life left for me, and seems to me one of the kindest acts of any 
man in the history of the mercantile business.” In 1922 a woman wrote: 


268 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Because he regarded patience as the virtue par excellence 
of people who spend their lives selling things to women, 
he required it of his people. He set the example. He 
used to tell the store family that while they were tempted 
to explosions of wrath by unreasonableness on the part of 
customers, he had that to cope with, and inefficiency on the 
part of employees to boot. But no more were all custom- 
ers unreasonable than were all employees inefficient! He 
cultivated the virtue of patience by counting his blessings, 
which were very great—so were theirs! ‘This is the gist 
of a hundred talks to salespeople over a period of fifty 
years. Wanamaker once said that the merchant had to 
learn three things: that most people were reasonable; that 
most employees worked well and willingly; and that only 
the man who was patient with his employees could get them 
to be patient with customers. 

But patience was only one of the twin jewels in the crown 
of successful Wanamaker salespeople. Courtesy was the 
other. After all, Wanamaker told his people, patience was 
only a negative virtue, “the exercise of an inhibition that 
any animal could be taught.” Courtesy, on the other hand, 
was a positive virtue. He called it “the unwearied prac- 
tice of the Golden Rule.” Just being good or kindly or 
agreeable did not make a person courteous. Courtesy 
required quick thinking and initiative. The importance of 
courtesy could not be overemphasized, Wanamaker declared. 
In every human relation courtesy is expected, and yet, 
although expected, it is appreciated; but when it is not 


“IT want to try to express my love and appreciation for you as the head of 
our business family. My health has gone and through your kindness I have 
been retired from the store. The twenty-nine years I was there were years 
of happiness. You have made it possible for me still to enjoy years of life 
that would not have been possible but for this release from business.” 
At intervals, generally anniversaries, Wanamaker gave souvenirs for long 
employment—watches and medals. 


THE: STORE FAMILY 269 


shown, nothing arouses resentment more quickly. What 
an asset to salespeople! How indispensable! * 

Wanamaker’s philosophy of patience and courtesy grew 
out of the nature of the man. It was not difficult for 
him to be agreeable to employees and customers alike; his 
courtesy was innate and his kindliness instinctive; and he 
never had spells of going off by himself. After his death 
one of his oldest employees was asked, “Did Mr. Wana- 
maker often come out of his shell?” “I never saw him in 
it,” was the answer. . 

Sometimes Wanamaker called himself “the pilot on 
the bridge,” and felt that he was responsible for “steering 
safely a ship of fifty-odd thousand souls.” In the store 


* From 1911 until the year of his death John Wanamaker wrote an annual 
“Courtesy Card.” These were placed around the store and were distributed 
to the store family and friends in miniature form. They were in the form 
of the store editorials. The theme was that “the best commodity under this 
roof should be a full stock of Courtesy,” and that the members of the store 
family, having been “well brought up,” could always be courteous if they 
made a thoughtful effort. Wanamaker said that if you “spend yourself in 
courtesy the more you will have left,” and that courtesy was “the unspoken 
truth of gentleness, and good manners go with it.” 





270 JOHN WANAMAKER 


family he thought always of those who were dependent 
upon them. The responsibility for their economic well- 
being “always keeps me prayerful,” as he put it. Their 
safety, he believed, depended upon his steering. 

But most often he thought of himself as a general in 
command of an army “fighting the battle of life.” They 
were making a living, yes, but the store family had a higher 
goal and one worthy of the best they could put into their 
work—the goal of service, of stamping indelibly the mer- 
cantile world with the highest principles of square dealing, 
of intelligent and original merchandising, and of molding 
public taste. “We help people to shop wisely, getting a 
dollar’s value for every dollar spent; but we also inspire 
and influence them to wear good things and to have the 
right things in their homes, and that leads to higher think- 
ing and higher living. What more glorious profession than 
ours?” he told his store family in 1879. In almost the 
same language he kept the dignity and responsibility of 
their calling before them—and what he called “the higher 
ideal than merely making money”—throughout his life. 
The first public expression of the idea we find in the Phila- 
delphia Store News, September, 1883: 


While it is true that customers know what they want, oftentimes they 
do not get it because ignorant and injudicious salespeople persuade them 
to take what is on hand, or more desirable to sell. It is hard to overcome 
old habits of trade. Our plan is to provide a full stock of everything, 
so there is no excuse for pawning off substitutes, and to educate our 
clerks to conscientiousness in serving customers with what they ought to 
have. It should be a study of every salesperson to prevent a customer 
from buying any article that is unsuitable or unserviceable. 


“Tt should be a study!” These five words express the 
attitude of John Wanamaker toward every problem, large 
and small, that confronted him from boyhood to old age. 
He had been a general storekeeper six years, and his store 


THE STORE FAMILY 271 


family had grown to nearly three thousand, when he 
realized that it was an essential part of the merchant’s job 
to stimulate his employees to study and to provide them 
with the means of acquiring a solid mercantile education. 
His adventures in this field are told in another chapter. 

But the general of an army (it was U. S. Grant who put 
this simile into John Wanamaker’s head) had other things 
to consider in connection with his soldiers than simply efh- 
ciency through education. Efficiency had also to do with 
morale and physical well-being. Wanamaker did not like 
the word efficiency. There was too much of the impersonal, 
of the machine in it; and the conception of efficiency as 
expounded by those who made the word popular and char- 
acteristic of American business, was repugnant to him. He 
did not use the word. The nearest he got to it was “efh- 
cient service,” but on reflection he dropped the adjective. 

Service was the keynote word of his mercantile career; and 
upon it he built the principles that revolutionized the spirit 
and methods of retailing in the United States. When he 
told his store family that the Prince of Wales was to be 
envied for the glorious motto of his coat of arms, and spoke 
of serving as a privilege as well as a duty, of an opportunity 
as well as a responsibility, he declared that as they served 
the public so would he be able to serve them. In the last 
decade of his life he wrote, “It has always been my belief 
that the business owes more to its employees than the mere 
opportunity of making a living.” * 

At the seventy-sixth birthday dinner in the Philadelphia 
store on July 13, 1914, an executive said: 


Within these walls you reared a family to aid you, in every sense of 
the word loyal and faithful to the utmost, and what you have done for 
them in making their tasks lighter will inure to the benefit of the work- 
ing classes and the employed classes throughout the civilized world. 


* The Independent, New York, November 30, 1914. 


O72 JOHN WANAMAKER 


What had John Wanamaker done? 

The answer would fill volumes. Out of a wealth of 
material we can mention only a few things in which Wana- 
maker was a pioneer. 

When Oak Hall was opened retail storekeeping was a 
slave’s life for employer and employee alike. The regular 
store hours were from eight to six, although many places 
opened at seven. On busy days the clerks were expected 
to work extra hours putting stock in place. During the 
fortnight before Christmas stores kept open supposedly 
until 10 p.m., but really long after that. There were no 
seats behind the counters. Conversation between clerks was 
punished by discharge. There were no discounts and no 
lockers. In England it was the custom for clerks, or 
“assistants,” to be lodged and boarded by the employer, 
who exacted service in the store or with the stocks that took 
all of the employee’s time. Instead of being free and will- 
ing helpers, contributing their share of personality to the 
business, the employees were bound by routine and their 
every action was prescribed by a book of rules. 

Into this grind Wanamaker had himself entered at the 
age of fourteen, and before he was twenty his health gave 
way under the strain of long hours. When he started 
business for himself, he was determined to shorten store 
hours. The first step in this direction was taken at Oak 
Hall in 1862, when overtime for arranging the stock was 
done away with for salesmen; and a ten-hour day was set 
for cutters and hands in the tailoring shop. In the first 
summer of the Grand Depot, on July 18, 1876, Wanamaker 
announced: “A vacation with pay is extended to all employ- 
ees of six months’ service.” Ten years later, after the ques- 
tion of a Saturday half-holiday had been discussed for 
several years without agreement being reached among mer- 
chants, Wanamaker decided to go ahead alone. On 


THE ‘STORE FAMILY 2578 


April 29, 1886, his advertisement carried an announce- 
ment that quickly forced others to follow his example and 
led to a nation-wide innovation. The statement read: 


The Saturday half-holiday has got to be settled. After July 4 we 
shall close at one o’clock on Saturday afternoons during the summer. 


It took nearly thirty years to educate the public to earlier 
closing hours during weekdays, shutting down on national 
holidays, abolishing Saturday evening hours the year round, 
and the “barbarous custom” (the expression is Wana- 
maker’s) of evening hours during the month preceding 
Christmas, and to closing from Friday evening to Monday 
morning during July and August. One by one these amel- 
iorations were secured—always with John Wanamaker in 
the vanguard. His unique position, as one of the largest 
employers in both Philadelphia and New York, enabled him 
to force the issue, as he had done in 1886. 

In 1917, when Wanamaker announced the ten full Sat- 
urday holidays in the summer in addition to two weeks 
vacation, he said: 


One of this store’s blossoms is the holidays, which for forty years 
have been given to its workers in Philadelphia since the Centennial year 
and in New York during all the years since we began here in 1896. 


When the government begged for the co-operation of 
business men to save coal during the World War, John 
Wanamaker decided on still shorter hours, and announced 
that his establishments would open at 10 a.m. and close at 
4:30 p.M. This led to a letter from an old friend and 
employee: 

I have read your morning notice that business is to begin in the middle 
of the morning and that it will stop in the middle of the afternoon. 
I can hardly believe it. I remember when you and all the rest of us 


came to the store at 7; and when you kept store first it was not closed 
until 7 in the evening. The next thing you did was to close your store 


274 JOHN WANAMAKER 


at 6 o’clock. Nobody complained about the long hours, because the 
thousands of little stores in the city, where the family lived in the 
same house, kept open until 10 at night. 

There were no rules about Saturdays, excepting that the store had to be 
closed before it struck 12 midnight. Everybody kept open. It was 
understood by the public that 10 p.m. was closing time, but most stores 
waited for later customers. It is your New Kind of Store that worked 
miracles. You shortened hours from time to time. You began the 
Saturday half holidays, and the entire holiday was unknown until you 
began it. You led in the later opening at 8:30, and closing at 6; then 
at 5:30, and recently at 5 o’clock. Of course I am an old man now. 
But I have seen all these changes go on, and as I ride past your store 
in the car and look out and think of the changes, I have to stop at your 
name and give you the credit for what you have done in bringing this 
about. Store people now have time for home and recreation. It seems 
too good to be true. 


Wanamaker answered: 


Thank you, dear old friend. What you have said is all true, but it 
isn’t due to the storekeeper alone. It is the people themselves that are 
educating themselves to consider those who serve them; and they are 
willing to arrange their time and make their purchases between shorter 
hours. Nothing that has occurred for a long time pleases us more than 
to see the readiness with which the public has accepted our Broadside 
Advertisement fixing the shorter hours. The world is coming to under- 
stand that there is more in life than just the grind. None who believes 
that, and who has the power to help people to a richer life, can fail to 
use his influence to make life happier for all. 


All that Wanamaker did, as the Grand Depot grew, to 
improve the physical equipment of his store was even more 
of a boon to his employees than to customers. Electric 
lights in 1878, followed by elevators and electric ventila- 
tion in 1882, revolutionized the life of those who had to 
spend their days behind counters. To lessen labor, trans- 
fers were introduced in 1878, and after a year of experi- 
menting pneumatic cash carriers, in September, 1880, did 
away with the wearisome journey to the cashier that had 


THE STORE FAMILY 275 


accompanied every purchase. The store was adequately 
heated. Ice water, lockers and rest rooms, and a restaurant 
added to the comfort of the store family. 

It was the growth of Wanamaker’s from 700 employees 
to 3,300 in less than six years that created a problem for 
the founder of the business. He had to devise means for 
preserving the family feeling; and he knew that he could 
not allow his now vast establishment to continue to grow 
without constant co-ordination in all its parts. Just as he 
had done in his Sunday school, when it grew rapidly, he 
did in his store. He got his people together frequently to 
talk to them. He mingled with them. He encouraged 
the establishment of organizations for savings and insur- 
ance, for the study of store problems, for social intercourse. 
He determined that the store family should remain a fam- 
ily, and this led him to father the formation of clubs and 
societies that would foster the spirit of solidarity and com- 
munity of interests. 

It is impossible to mention the many store organizations 
in Philadelphia and New York, and the facilities and 
encouragement given to these by the founder of the busi- 
ness. [hey are impressive in their number and variety, 
and some of them have profoundly influenced—helped to 
bring about would be a better phrase—the changes of the 
last generation in the relations between employers and 
employees. Just to give one instance of the recognition 
of this fact, a leading authority of retail merchandising in 
the United States, after citing the tables and rules of the 
Wanamaker Mutual Insurance Association as “a fine type 
of sick and death benefit organization,” has written: 


In the development of great movements to advance the interests of 
their employees the progressive department stores of the country have 
always led. John Wanamaker in his Philadelphia and New York stores, 
Marshall Field in Chicago, and William Filene’s Sons Co. in Boston, are 


276 JOHN WANAMAKER 


well-known concerns that present the highest type of organization fo 
the individual and social betterment of employees, entirely aside from 
the regular work of the store. Such an effort would be quite impossible 
for a small store.? 


But in the development of store organizations, Wana- 
maker enjoyed a unique advantage, not only because of the 
size of his business, but because he had equally large stores 
in cities only two hours apart. This made possible the best 
sort of competition inside the family. Philadelphia tried 
to get ahead of New York, and New York ahead of Phila- 
delphia. From the first and formative years this friendly 
rivalry, encouraged in every way, added to the zest of par- 
ticipation in the activities of the organizations. There grew 
up constant interchange of visits and annual contests. 

We speak of the cadets of the John Wanamaker Com- 
mercial Institute in relating Wanamaker’s adventures in 
mercantile education. For the older employees, men and 
women, were established the Millrose Athletic Association 
in New York and the Meadowbrook Athletic Association in 
Philadelphia, named for the country homes of Wana- 
maker’s sons. ‘These two clubs, whose membership is lim- 
ited to full-time employees of John Wanamaker, have won 
an unusual place in amateur sports. The Millrose Club, 
with its house, grounds, and swimming beach at Bath Beach, 
forged to the front in baseball, basketball, swimming, skat- 
ing, shooting, and golf competition around New York. Its 
indoor track meets have achieved international fame. They 
grew in popular favor until Madison Square Garden was 
filled for two days to watch amateur athletes gathered from 


“Nystrom, Economics of Retailing, pp. 155-156. The opportunities of 
the large business to contribute to the advancement of its employees are 
emphasized in John Wanamaker’s address at the second annual meeting of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science, published in the Annals, 
May, 1900, and in his testimony before the Federal Industrial Commission 
on Conditions of Labor, on December g, 1899. 


THE STORE FAMILY 277 


all over the world. Members of the Millrose A. A. have 
won more than seventy-five national championships in field 
and track athletics. The Meadowbrook A. A., with its ath- 
letic field by the Schuylkill and its running track and tennis 
courts on top of the Philadelphia store, refused to yield 
anything to its rival in New York. Its indoor carnivals 
have gathered as many laurels as those of the Maillrose 
Club; and its members have participated in the breaking 
and equaling of several world’s records.’ 

Wanamaker had the joy of a child in the success 
of store organizations. We find in his diary vivid ac- 
counts of visits to the outdoor meets of the two athletic 
clubs; evenings in the store gymnasium; races and matches 
attended on the roof of the Philadelphia store; and—up 
to the end of his life—evenings in both stores at entertain- 
ments and concerts given by his store family. He and 
his sons helped start the organizations, aided them finan- 
cially, carried them through difficulties, and, above all, 
gave them the encouragement of their presence. How 
much the activities of the store family were on the veteran 
merchant’s mind in the latter years of his life is shown by 
the correspondence in the private files. On May 18, 1921, 
he telegraphed to his son: 


Our Meadowbrook Club ought not to go down. We spent years on 
organization and got a reputation. I like the old name that belonged 
to Thomas, and I want to keep it up; but I am quite interested in buying 
a farm, not too far away from Camden, with an old house on it. If we 
can’t find anything there, perhaps we could at Chester. We have got 


*The Meadowbrook Club girls’ team equaled the world’s record for 
440 yards relay outdoors on two occasions, and now holds the world’s indoor 
record. In 1919 fifteen thousand people, guests of the Meadowbrook A. A., 
on the roof of the Wanamaker store, saw William T. Tilden II win the 
men’s singles in the Middle States Covered Court Tennis Tournament. In 
the last year of John Wanamaker’s life the Meadowbrook Club won 12 of 
its 16 cross-country meets and g of its 13 track and field meets. It holds 19 
National A. A. U. championships, and the 200-meter Olympic championship. 


278 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to do something here to take the edge off of the drudgery of the long 
days. 


Solicitude for the physical well-being of his store family 
led John Wanamaker to establish a Medical Department 
in 1906, to which ample space was given in the new build- 
ings which were just being completed. A Medical Director 
was appointed in the Philadelphia store. Very quickly the 
staff of the stores grew to a consulting physician, two 
medical directors, an assistant physician, specialists for nose, 
throat, ear, and eyes, three dentists, two chiropodists, trained 
nurses, and office assistants. Rest rooms, clinics, and medi- 
cal care, with adequate equipment, for the physical well- 
being of employees are now a part of the organization of 
most large establishments in the mercantile and manufactur- 
ing world. But when Wanamaker inaugurated them they 
were virtually unknown—except in the experimental stage— 
in American mercantile life. Store people looked after 
themselves as best they could, and when they were too sick 
to work they went home. It was Wanamaker’s conception 
of a store family that made him feel that under the roof of 
his stores should be a hospital clinic for the thousands work- 
ing there. It was not until he had his new buildings, how- 
ever, that it was possible to realize this dream. 

The Medical Department, catching the spirit of the 
Wanamaker organization, was not content with filling a 
purely negative role, ministering to people after they fell 
ill. It struck out aggressively as an agency of instruction 
in personal hygiene and in the protection of all against sick- 
ness and accident. Wanamaker was keenly interested in 
having applicants for positions examined, so that none would 
be taken in and put to tasks beyond their strength or injuri- 
ous to their health. More than once we find reference in 
the diaries to this department’s statistics of the physical 
development of the younger employees; and the Medical 








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THE STORE FAMILY 279 


Director’s occasional recommendations of measures to pro- 
mote hygiene are mentioned with approval.” 

In regard to his attitude toward his store family and his 
relations with them, Wanamaker said in a campaign speech 
in Pennsylvania in 1897: 

“Upon the payroll of our firm are nearly 8,000 people, 
whose wages range annually from $20,000 each to the boys 
at $250. We have employed more than 100,000 persons, 
and have never had a strike or a threatened strike. We 
are never obliged to seek workers, but only to choose from 
the 5,000 people who apply to our Employment Depart- 
ment every month. Our house has for years maintained a 
pension roll for aged and worthy employees; and a system of 
weekly benefits, absolutely controlled by the employees 
themselves, to be paid in case of sickness and death, has 
paid more than $100,000. Length of service is rewarded 
by increase of salary, other things being equal. I believe 
we pay the highest average wages of any large mercantile 
house in America, and for thirty-six years, since our busi- 
ness began, we have not defaulted an instant in the wages 
of our employees.” 

Wanamaker still had more than a quarter of a century 
ahead of him during which his business was going to double 
and his scale of wages largely increase. But with two 
large stores, instead of one, and in different cities, the record 
from 1897 to 1922 was as clear as from 1861 to 1897. 
When Wanamaker died, probably a quarter of a million 
people had been in his employ and he had engaged in the 
multitude of businesses that go to make up the activity of 
a general store. And yet it could be written of him, “He 
never had a strike.” 

At no time in his life was there anything impersonal or 


*See Safeguards and Aids to the Health and Well-being of Employees: 
The John Wanamaker Stores, Philadelphia and New York. 


280 JOHN WANAMAKER 


machine-like in Wanamaker’s relations with his store family. 
Admission to Wanamaker’s, once it became a great estab- 
lishment, was solely through the employment office, and 
the head of the business did not take any part in engaging 
workers, except executives. But once a person had been 
admitted to the store family, and was retained permanently, 
he never had occasion to feel that he was simply a cog in 
the machine. Success and happiness came to him in measure 
as he felt that he had his essential part in the business. 
Wanamaker impressed upon all who worked for him the 
fact that the service was mutual and the interest mutual. 
It was a thought that was expressed in speeches, in mes- 
sages, in personal contacts, over and over again. 

On the other hand, he avoided the paternal attitude. He 
knew that he had created and was carrying an organization 
that gave many thousands the opportunity of making a liv- 
ing and of finding social contacts and recreation and a liberal 
education in his store; but he was not bestowing benefits. 
There was a guid pro quo. For good service Wanamaker 
gave good wages. The favorable conditions under which 
the store family worked, the attention paid to their physical 
well-being, and what they received from membership in 
the store family were not a part of their compensation. 
They were the normal activities of people whose common 
interests threw them together in various forms of associa- 
tion, and Wanamaker’s role was simply to help them 
develop and make fruitful these extra-business activities. 

Wanamaker was too strong an individualist to work out 
any scheme of partnership with the men around him. He 
was never willing to share profits or responsibility except 
as he saw fit and fair under the circumstances of the 
moment. Bonuses, percentages, delegated authority, yes, 
but no contracts binding himself or others. The evidence 
is overwhelming that he never entertained the idea— 


THE STORE FAMILY 281 


although it was frequently suggested to him—of the radical 
readjustment of his business on another basis. 

He did not have to do so. His conception of relation 
of employer to employee worked. Able men were always 
found to help him conduct his growing business, men 
inspired with his ideals and proud to work under him, men 
content with the rewards he gave them. The store family 
believed that the head of the business was sincere in stating 
that retail merchandising was a service. The ideal and per- 
sonal affection were the bonds. Who served him he served; 
who were loyal to him, to them he was loyal. And on 
both sides it was a loyalty to the end, without limit and 
without reserve. 


CHAPTER XIX 
ADVENTURES IN MERCANTILE EDUCATION 


N an address at the Academy of Music on June 30, 1887, 
Wanamaker said: | 

“America has been far behind other nations in business 
education. We are all in too much of a hurry to reach the 
top, and the want of training to hold positions taken is the 
constant cause of failure. I watched some fellows climb- 
ing a pole for prizes at the top; four out of five came 
short. The eager, breathless, hasty ones couldn’t hold on, 
but the fellow who stood by and watched and then saw 
how he could twist himself around the pole, paying atten- 
tion and thinking, kept on till he sprang down greeted by 
shouts to the victor. A friend said to me, “I always 
endeavor not to lose hold of what I gain.” 

“Germany sends the best trained men into our American 
business life. It is astonishing what a big part of the 
importers and bankers in New York are German-born. 
Next comes England, where a lad enters a four years’ 
apprenticeship and graduates with a certificate from a busi- 
ness house which carries him over the whole world. In 
America but little is known now of apprenticeships. The 
business colleges must be the mothers of our future busi- 
ness men. I wish we had schools for business that did not 
depend solely on private capital. I hope benevolent men 
will found universities of business.” 

Wanamaker was ahead of his generation. Nothing of 
the kind existed in the country. He had been in business 
for more than twenty-five years, and had come to realize 

282 


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MERCANTILE EDUCATION 283 


that large establishments like his had to depend upon them- 
selves to give a mercantile education to their own people. 
When he was still in his twenties, he had begun to impress 
personally upon his salesmen the necessity for knowledge 
not only of their goods, but of how to dispose of them. 
This knowledge and this skill could be obtained only by 
constant study and thought. One of his first employees 
told us that when Oak Hall was a small store Wanamaker 
kept a book in his office for recording the day’s sales. The 
men had to go back and write in it how many sales they 
had made and why they thought they had lost certain sales. 
Wanamaker studied the book every morning, and called the 
men in one by one to discuss salesmanship with them, taking 
as his text what each had written. He managed to find 
time to do this for years. Then the business grew too big, 
and there was the struggle to launch and develop the gen- 
eral store out of the Grand Depot. But back in 1880 prizes 
were offered for essays on salesmanship, which were printed 
in pamphlet form and circulated in the store. Wanamaker 
formed the habit of getting his people together in groups 
and teaching them the principles of salesmanship.* 
Wanamaker did not weary in preaching to his store fam- 
ily what he called “the gospel of preparedness in business.” 
He set the example himself. He frequently asserted that 
none in the store, including the founder, was too old to 
learn; and he encouraged and helped to make possible store 
organizations for the purpose of giving business and cul- 
tural courses to adults. These clubs and societies are too 


* The Library of Business Practice, iv, p. 132, calls John Wanamaker the 
pioneer in teaching salesmanship. The Dry Goods Economist, March 25, 
1911, said editorially: “The number of successful men and women who have 
been trained in the Wanamaker stores and have won high position in the 
dry-goods world is almost countless. Probably no better recommendation can 
be possessed by one who is seeking employment in this field than the fact 
that some years of his or her business life have been spent in one or both of 
the Wanamaker stores.” 


284 JOHN WANAMAKER 


numerous to mention. We can only say that Wanamaker 
was always ready to advise their officers, to attend their 
meetings, and to take part in their discussions. How he 
felt after nearly fifty years in business is expressed in a 
stirring speech to the Wanamaker Business Club on Octo- 
ber 4, 1909, when he declared: 

“The rallying cry of the Wanamaker people must be: 
“Back to the school!” The old folks from whose knowl- 
edge, and I may say experience, we have got so much of 
our success, will stand up around you—myself among them 
—to say that we are not too old to learn, and that young 
folks must have an opportunity to recover what they have 
lost by leaving school early to come into the ranks of the 
wage earners to help the mother, to help little children, to 
help to keep the home. God bless every one that has made 
sacrifices like that! It is one of the inspirations for the 
school that we have under our roof. Back to the school! 
And whoever is standing on the steps going up to ring the 
bells that shall open to his ambition a path to the higher 
levels of the world’s work and enterprise must have in his 
mind the power to grasp the work and do it, to give himself, 
heart and soul, to the task of getting more education.” 

To the older people there were lectures and conferences 
and access to a well-stocked store library, as well as the classes 
organized by themselves in their clubs, which met at night 
in the stores. This was voluntary effort voluntarily guided. 
But for boys and girls, as soon as they became numerous in 
the store family, Wanamaker felt that it was his duty and 
privilege to provide regular instruction, which he made 
obligatory long before state laws stipulated continuation 
classes for employees from fourteen to sixteen years old. 
He was the pioneer in establishing courses of instruction 
in 1878, which developed into a store school in 1890, with 
a principal and staff of teachers. The John Wanamaker 


MERCANTILE EDUCATION 285 


Commercial Institute was organized, with optional senior 
as well as obligatory junior branches. The J. W. C. I. was 
put on military footing; students were called cadets, and 
regular drill work was introduced for boys and girls. John 
Wanamaker provided for them uniforms and military 
equipment, a commandant, and a bandmaster and instru- 
ments. In the New York store there were continuation 
classes, with a curriculum following that of the grammar 
school; and the J. W. C. I. was extended to New York. 
Of what the cadets were able to do in the Spanish-Ameri- 
can War, because of their instruction, we have already 
spoken.” The story of the earlier years of the unique 
experiment was written by Wanamaker himself in 1908.° 
As he was in his element with young people and was enthu- 
siastic about education and military training, the J. W. C. I. 
was one of the happiest adventures of his life—an inex- 
haustible source of pride and pleasure as long as he lived. 
He got great satisfaction out of the feeling that he was 
able to give his young people what they would otherwise 
have been deprived of having—instruction in arithmetic, 
spelling, penmanship, correspondence, English, bookkeep- 
ing, commercial geography and law, stenography, elocution, 
debating and drawing; and that he afforded them the 
opportunity of gymnastic and military training, band music, 
and belonging to an orchestra, mandolin club, and glee club. 
There was nothing of the spirit of bestowing largesse in 
it. Wanamaker was no absentee benefactor, simply per- 
forming a duty. He went through the schoolrooms often, 


*The course of study of the senior class was reproduced as a model of 
what store schools should offer in the Bulletin of the U. S. Department of 
Education, Washington, 1916, No. 34, p. 25. 

* See above, vol. i, p. 374. 

*See “The John Wanamaker Commercial Institute—A Store School,” in 
Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, January, 1909, 
pp. 151-155. Later Wanamaker contributed to the Dry Goods Economist, 
April, 1912, an article on “Training Boys for Retail Career.” 


286 JOHN WANAMAKER 


showing an interest in the work that escaped none and that 
spurred on the students to do their best. He attended 
drills and concerts, presented flags, and bestowed medals, 
getting fun out of it; and they all knew it. His diary is 
full of enthusiastic accounts of the “wonderful doings” 
of his cadets. On one occasion he got John Philip Sousa 
to direct the band and the bugle and drum corps. He was 
always present for reviews. He had the cadets turn out for 
parades at civic celebrations. He used to tell the girl cadets 
that he would “bet on them anywhere.” In the midst of 
his exciting homeward voyage to attend the Republican 
National Convention in 1912, we find him writing to Colo- 
nel Scott a letter expressing keenly his regret at not being 
able to attend the summer review at the Metropolitan Opera 
House; and in the autumn of 1913 he recorded his pride 
at the “grand ball” given by the boy and girl cadets of the 
New York store in the Seventy-first Regiment Armory. 

In 1916, when President Wilson called out the National 
Guard for service on the Mexican border, the two stores 
put into the field, wrote Wanamaker, “more than a full 
strength company, trained and ready for service, that the 
government and War Department did not know to be in 
existence.” The next year, he ordered a bronze medal 
to be struck at the United States Mint and presented to 
the cadets on their return. From Florida he wired: 


As far back as the year 1891 the J. W. C. I. incorporated into its 
educational work military training; and, without anticipating another 
war, kept up its study in drills without intermission for the past twenty- 
six years, greatly assisted at various times by the presence, suggestions, 
criticisms, and encouragement of prominent military men such as General 
Leonard Wood. As your commander-in-chief I send to every member in 
each city my congratulations and best wishes. 


The cadets had a number of opportunities, both in New 
York and Philadelphia, to live days they will never forget 





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MERCANTILE EDUCATION 287 


from 1917 to 1919. They took part in all the ceremonies 
and celebrations incidental to the World War, and formed 
a guard of honor to greet the visits of Marshal Joffre and 
other Allied generals and statesmen who visited the Wana- 
maker stores; and they were reviewed by the King and 
Queen of Belgium. 

One of the great features of the J. W. C. I. was the two 
weeks encampment at Island Heights, required for boy 
cadets, and optional for girl cadets. They came in detach- 
ments from the two stores to the J. W. C. I. camp at the 
mouth of the Toms River, where, all summer long, the 
groups were drilled as in a National Guard camp, but with 
more time and facilities for baseball, field sports, swimming, 
and fishing. The senior cadets took their turn in the last 
fortnight of August, and John Wanamaker enjoyed going 
down for inspection day. His last visit, when he made a 
memorial address, was on August 19, 1919. 

We cannot go into the details of this great work, with 
all its ramifications, but it will readily be seen how success- 
fully Wanamaker created for his younger employees the 
fun and the educational advantages that he himself lacked 
in childhood. It was the fulfillment of a dream to give 
others, in so far as he could do so, compensation for what 
they missed in having to go to work early in life. The 
John Wanamaker Commercial Institute, with its fascinating 
cadet activities, stamped the younger employees with the 
personality and ideals of their great chief; broadened their 
intellectual horizon; gave them strength and heart for their 
work; and enabled them to have school experiences which 
would be a precious memory in later life.’ 


*“The traditional thrill of pride in Harvard or Smith is no more impell- 
ing than the loyalty of these pupils to the Wanamaker schools.”—Caroline 
Slater in the Independent, February 7, 1916. ‘As the best universities of 
Europe and America set their ‘hall mark’ upon their sons, so this store 
stamps with the mark of distinction those of its employees who come under 
the influence of its traditions, To have made a place for oneself in Wana- 


288 JOHN WANAMAKER 


When Wanamaker returned from Florida on April 26, 
1922, he said to the J. W. C. I. cadets who came to greet 
him what proved to be his last public message to them: 

“Tt is very lovely of you to come. You don’t need to 
bring me flowers when you come with your happy faces, and 
the things that you have spoken which are in your hearts. 
The best people that we have had in the store, in all its 
history, are the boys that have grown up in it. It 1s not 
rich men’s sons that have gone to college, that have made 
the world’s business men. They were poor boys that didn’t 
have anything but a common-school education. ‘Those are 
the boys that have been the great men in the nation; so just 
make up your minds to keep your eyes and ears open, and 
see and hear things. Think and keep working. The fel- 
lows that don’t try to learn any more are soon spotted by 
the people around them. Thank you so much for the visit. 
Again I say, I like to see your faces.” 

When the new stores were built, large space was set aside 
for classrooms, auditoriums, and drill floors for the store 
families. As the Philadelphia store neared completion, 
Wanamaker had chartered, under the laws of Pennsylvania, 
the American University of Trade and Applied Commerce 
on December 10, 1908, “to perpetuate the schools of busi- 
ness instruction of the John Wanamaker Commercial Insti- 
tute, and to enlarge their scope to enable the students while 
earning a livelihood to obtain by textbooks, lectures, and by 
the schools of daily opportunity such a practical and techni- 
cal education in the arts and sciences of commerce and trade 
that they may be better equipped to fill honorable positions 
in life and thereby increase their personal earning power.” 

We might go on and give a description of the physical 


maker’s is to have won a diploma in the business world. For the loss we 
have sustained in Mr. Wanamaker’s death nothing can make up to us. But 
in this store, which reflects his personality his spirit still lives on in us.”— 
J.W.C.1. Bulletin, January 6, 1923. 


MERCANTILE EDUCATION 289 


equipment and of the courses. We might quote statistics. 
But it is all summed up in one sentence from a letter John 
Wanamaker sent, after the completion of the new Philadel- 
phia building, to a friend who congratulated him. It shows 
that the adventurer in mercantile education recognized the 
essential foundation of his life’s work: 


It is one thing to build the ship, but it is much more important to 
train people to sail the ship. 


CHAPTER XX 


ADVENTURES IN INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC 
EDUCATION 


ANAMAKER thought that the expression, “self- 

made man,” commonly used to denote those who 
had achieved success without an education and family back- 
ing, was a misnomer. He never used it in speaking of 
himself. He contended that successful men were all self- 
made, whether they came from palace or from hut. To 
him the essential—and principal—factor in getting ahead 
in the world was what each man did for himself. At the 
same time he did not belittle the value of educational oppor- 
tunities, and he said frequently that training of mind and 
hand and constant study not only helped a man to develop 
his talents and become efficient, but also to give him a rich, 
full life and make him happy in his work. 

In a Pennsylvania campaign speech he said: 

‘There isn’t a lazy bone in the body of the average Ameri- 
can workingman. He asks no favors, but only an oppor- 
tunity to use his steady hands, clear eyes, and strong arms. 
The best standing army that any country can have is not 
clothed in blue with brass buttons. It is the army in over- 
alls, the gentlemen of the forge and factories, hands grimy 
with coal, smoke, and grease.” 

But many years later, in a store editorial, he wrote: 

The making of America cannot be done with picks and shovels alone. 
The real America of the future depends upon what boys and girls 


become by academic and vocational training. ‘The human mind is an 
empty furnace, unless the coals of learning are put in it and the fires 


290 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 291 


kept burning by persistent study. Natural smartness will not take the 
part of a well-trained and well-filled mind. 


When he was in the prime of life he told a graduating 
class: 

“You can never put a four-story man on a one-story boy. 
Education is making our own structure out of the imperish- 
able principles of life. Actual living is completing the 
building which we have been sent into the world to con- 
struct. Not half a building, but a symmetrical, perfected 
whole, to fit into the place reserved for it in the temple 
of the Divine Architect of the universe. An error in the 
foundations will make your whole life a leaning tower, 
and, unlike Pisa, it will suddenly topple over.” 

Holding these ideas, it is not surprising that Wanamaker’s 
life is filled with adventures in education. What he did 
for his store family has already been told. We have 
related also how he insisted upon his Sunday-school teach- 
ers preparing for their lesson; to make this possible he ran 
a religious weekly and financed the publication of lesson 
helps at a time when these were not available.” But his 
conception of his duty and opportunities in the field of edu- 
cation was not confined to store and Sunday-school efficiency. 

Wanamaker was still a young man, and had not yet 
become a large employer of boys and girls in his business, 
when the idea came to him that something ought to be 
done by Bethany to give educational facilities to young 
people of the church and neighborhood. The group of 
buildings erected at Twenty-second and Bainbridge Streets 
was planned with the idea of offering instruction in trades 
as well as creating a center for social activities and physical 
training. In Bethany, one of the first of our institutional 
churches, was founded an industrial school where, at the 
very beginning, five hundred boys and girls enrolled for the 


* See above, vol. i, pp. 190-192. 


292 JOHN WANAMAKER 


study of bookkeeping, telegraphy, cooking, sewing, print- 
ing, and drafting. Wanamaker put his heart and soul into 
Bethany College, of which he became president of the 
Board of Trustees. At first it was a branch of the Sunday 
school, with two evenings a week of night school from 
October to May. Soon afterward Bethany College was 
opened “to all comers,” as Wanamaker put it, “so that we 
may help more young people to better things.” ‘The courses 
were increased and given every night; and additional space 
outside was secured by moving to the building of the old 
Rush Hospital at Twenty-second and Pine Streets. 

It was Wanamaker’s idea that Bethany College, like the 
church and Sunday school, should be self-supporting, once 
the equipment was provided. He felt that its usefulness 
would be destroyed unless those who received its benefits 
made a sacrifice in order to secure their training. So nomi- 
nal fees were charged. For many years the work was most 
discouraging, but Wanamaker and his associates persisted, 
despite irregularity in attendance and a lack of earnestness 
and enthusiasm. For a while it seemed a case of leading 
horses to water but not being able to make them drink. 
Nothing could have been more discouraging than this 
adventure in industrial education. More than one Bethany 
pastor recommended discontinuing it. 

But a change in the attitude of “the masses” toward 
education occurred in the 1890's, the full influence and sig- 
nificance of which took twenty years or more to be under- 
stood. But Wanamaker saw it. In a small way it began 
to be felt in the Bethany neighborhood. It was a phe- 
nomenon observed almost at the beginning of the life of 
Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, and was soon to transform 
completely the People’s Institute of Cooper Union, across 
Astor Place from the New York store. Wanamaker took 
over the Stewart business in 1896, just at the time when the 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 293 


children of recent immigrants were flocking to night schools. 
The older American stock in large cities began to realize 
that it would become “‘hewers of wood and drawers of 
water” for the second generation of the later stock from 
Europe unless an effort was made to rear a better-trained 
generation. John Wanamaker and his associates in Beth- 
any welcomed the awakening. It gave them new faith in 
their industrial adventure. In 1900 one of them, Wana- 
maker’s old friend and business associate, Rudolph S. Wal- 
ton, died, leaving to Bethany College nearly $200,000." 
This gift, coming from one who knew the work intimately, 
was an encouragement and inspiration, and led to a change 
that Wanamaker had long had in mind to make. 

During his annual visits to Europe he had been to the 
People’s Palace and the Polytechnic in London and to 
a number of German institutions. At home he became 
acquainted with the extension work of the Armour Institute 
in Chicago and with the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In 
the private files the biographer has discovered reports of 
these institutions, annotated by Wanamaker; and notes 
which indicate personal visits, followed by correspondence, 
between 1898 and 1905. Firm in the belief that the best 
setting for an organization giving industrial courses was a 
simple and wholly unpretentious one, such as they already 
had, none of the Walton money was put into a building. 
But it was thought that the school would fill a place in 
the life of Philadelphia better if dissociated from the church 
and moved to a more central location, and that day as well 
as night courses ought to be offered. In 1908 Bethany Col- 
lege was incorporated as the Wanamaker Institute of Indus- 
tries. It was moved to buildings at Twenty-third and 
Walnut Streets, owned by Wanamaker, who donated their 


* See vol. i, pp. 33, 144-5. 


294. JOHN WANAMAKER 


use, free of expense, after having altered them to suit the 
needs of the school. 

Before Wanamaker died the Institute had been again 
enlarged, overflowing into annexes. Hundreds of young 
people had been graduated; and over thirty courses were 
being given in school subjects and languages as well as 
in painting, music, art needlework, dressmaking, milli- 
nery, bookkeeping, stenography, engraving, garment cut- 
ting, mechanical drawing, and domestic sciences. 

In the 1880’s, when the Bethany experiment was 
launched, an old Philadelphia merchant and philanthro- 
pist told Wanamaker that the crying need of the day was 
to revive through trade schools the old apprentice system. 
Isaiah V. Williamson believed that “to have an America 
on a solid basis we must preserve and increase the artisan 
class.” He never tired of asserting that Pennsylvanians 
ought to go back to the ideas of William Penn, who said 
that his colonists should have liberal learning, but also “use- 
ful knowledge” and “ingenuity mixed with industry.” Wil- 
liamson was alarmed at the “abandonment or disuse of the 
good old custom of apprenticeship in trades, and this has 
resulted in many young men growing up in idleness, which 
leads to vice and crime, and is fraught with great danger 
to society.” The Bethany idea was a fine thing, but it 
needed, as Wanamaker had always contended, the creation 
of the desire to profit by facilities offered, and not a lot of 
money to give free courses which would not be appreciated. 
The Williamson idea, however, required a plant and an 
endowment to make possible the experiment. 

On December 1, 1888, Williamson established a trust 
fund of nearly $2,000,000, which he handed over to seven 
friends for the purpose of realizing his great idea. He 
chose men who were interested in the apprentice system and 
who had personal knowledge of how it still worked in 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 295 


England and Germany. All of them, too, understood what 
he wanted done. By the terms of the trust the students 
were to be “‘bound as indentured apprentices to the trus- 
tees” for not less than three years; “to be fed, clad, and 
lodged; to receive an English education; to be taught 
trades; to have religious training, physical training, and 
training in frugal and economical habits.” The only con- 
ditions were that the students should be chosen first from 
Philadelphia and surrounding counties; that not more than 
$300,000 could be expended on buildings and land; and 
that the benefits of the school should “in all respects be 
gratuitous.” The trustees were made self-perpetuating. 

One of the seven prominent Philadelphians who accepted 
the Williamson trust was John Wanamaker. He outlived 
the others, as he did his fellow-members of the Centennial 
Board. His longevity and the faithful interest that never 
flagged to the day of his death made Wanamaker a unique 
influence in the foundation and development of the Wil- 
liamson Free School of Mechanical Trades. In thirty-four 
years he rarely missed a meeting of the Board of Trustees, 
and for ten years preceding his death he was its chairman, 
and made a point of presiding at the graduation exercises 
in the latter part of April. During those years nearly fif- 
teen hundred young men were given diplomas. 

So ably did the trustees administer the fund that the 
school, opened on October 31, 1891, built on a fine tract 
of land in the suburbs of Philadelphia, was erected, includ- 
ing the cost of the land, entirely out of income. And after 
twenty-five years, in his Commencement address Wana- 
maker said that the school had two hundred acres and forty 
buildings, and yet the endowment was larger than when it 
was handed over by Williamson. This astounding result 
was due in part, of course, to the handling of the trust 
funds. But the principal reason lay in the character and 


296 JOHN WANAMAKER 


ideals of the founder, which the trustees had simply carried 
out, “to the best of our ability,” as Wanamaker modestly 
put it. Williamson abhorred “the facade idea in educa- 
tion,” by which he meant splurging in sumptuous buildings, 
and forgetting that “schools are what the teachers are.” 
The young men at Williamson School were all carefully 
picked from hundreds of applicants between the ages of 
sixteen and eighteen. They had only four weeks vacation 
each year; and during their three years they did most of 
the work about the place—construction, repairing, and 
grading—as a part of their schooling. The forty buildings 
of which Wanamaker spoke were the result of practical 
education in bricklaying, carpentry, and mechanical drawing. 

Wanamaker was always loyal to causes as well as to indi- 
viduals. When he undertook to do anything it was because 
he believed in it; and he saw it through to the end. Wil- 
liamson was the only friend of whom Wanamaker was the 
biographer." He admired Willamson’s sterling qualities 
and his vision. Helping to establish the Williamson School 
and to watch over it was a sacred trust. Wanamaker spoke 
on the life of Isaiah Williamson at the formal opening of 
the school in 1891; he presided and made the welcoming 
address at the first Commencement in 1894. At the third 
Commencement, 1897, he urged the students to be worthy 
of what Williamson had done for them, for “if the founder 
knew, he would never be satisfied to have a thousand dol- 
lars of his money spent upon a ten-cent boy.” One of the 
most brilliant speeches of Wanamaker’s career was made at 
the twenty-fifth anniversary in 1916. The diary is full of 
references to the Williamson School, and we find frequent 
expressions of pride in its growth and in the success of its 
alumni. 


*The “Life of Isaiah V. Williamson” has never been published. See 
above, vol. ii, pp. 218-19, and also Bibliography. 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 297 


To the graduating class of the Peirce School in Philadel- 
phia in 1912 Wanamaker said: 

“In these days an education is within the reach of every- 
one. A man’s faculties can be shaped and drawn out, not 
all at once, but little by little, steadily, yet always doing 
something and surely advancing in the right direction to sift 
out the things of value from the things without value or 
actually detrimental to his well-being.” 

But Wanamaker had long come to accept the fact—a 
cardinal one of human nature—that most people seem to 
be born without initiative and never acquire it; consequently, 
what is within the reach of everyone, everyone does not get. 
An education is only a foundation, and adults have to build 
the edifice of their lives upon what they learned in child- 
hood. How they build depends upon themselves, and yet | 
—in a very real sense—upon the training and opportunities 
of childhood. Wanamaker recognized as a great tragedy 
the life of a man who developed initiative and attained great 
prominence, but who was never able to build as he wanted 
to, owing to defects in the foundation. Therefore he added 
to what he said to the Peirce School graduates: 

“To be in the right mood and to have the right lessons 
from the right teacher to help us on to the main road is 
the chief thing.” 

In Wanamaker’s private papers we came across a letter 
in which he set forth as one of the great purposes of his 
life “helping others to get an education.” As we have seen, 
he was a pioneer in the educational field among his employ- 
ees; and he had not been superintendent of Bethany long 
before he wanted his pupils to get at Bethany more than 
Bible instruction. He rejoiced in giving unstintingly of his 
time and devotion to realizing the dream of Williamson. 

Many men with scant education who have risen to the top 
profess to make little of college education, and assume that 


298 JOHN WANAMAKER 


what they didn’t have is not needed by others. Wanamaker 
was incapable of this display of bombast and ignorance. 
Not being consumed with self-esteem, he recognized his 
own deficiencies; and accustomed to think things out, he 
put high value on mental as well as other forms of train- 
ing.” Se was keenly interested in having his sons go 
through Princeton, and when his daughters were of school 
age, his interest in their education was characteristically 
thorough. There was no college preparatory school for 
girls in Philadelphia. Wanamaker founded one. Welles- 
ley College took an interest in it, and furnished the teach- 
ers. Wanamaker got the Rev. Dr. J. R. Miller to become 
its principal. He took the house, 2027 Chestnut Street, 
and the school opened on September 27, 1882, with board- 
ing and day pupils. The Wellesley School, as it was called, 
attracted much attention throughout the country; it brought 
John Wanamaker into contact with President Freeman of 
Wellesley, and did much to inspire him and others in 
Philadelphia to consider the claims of women to higher edu- 
cation. At the fifth anniversary, in 1887, Professor Robert 
Ellis Thompson, addressing the graduating class, expressed 
the hope that before long women would be admitted to the 
University of Pennsylvania. Wanamaker, who was presid- 
ing, rose to his feet and led the applause that greeted this 
heresy. Until he went to Washington Wanamaker stopped 
at the Wellesley School every Monday morning on the 
way to business and gave a talk to the girls. 

Military education appealed to Wanamaker, not only for 


* Answering the query of a New England educator, he wrote on Novem- 
ber 15, 1912: “Regarding the value of an education, permit me to say that, 
all things else being equal, I believe that the man with an education is 
better able to grasp quickly and solve the problems that confront him in 
whatever calling or profession he may engage. A mechanic, to do his best 
part, must have tools of good quality that are in perfect condition. Educa- 
tion does for a man’s brains what the mechanic keeps doing when he sees 
that the tools with which he works are of good temper and properly sharp- 
ened,” 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 299 


its discipline, but also because it prepared young men for 
National Guard duty in their communities and also to take 
places of responsibility in case of war. He put the training 
of the younger employees in his stores on a military footing 
at a time when the United States had enjoyed nearly thirty 
years of uninterrupted peace and there were no war clouds 
on the horizon. This interest led him to accept election to 
the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania Military College 
at Chester in 1892. The next year he became vice-presi- 
dent, and in 1899 president, of the Board. After his death 
Colonel Hyatt wrote to Rodman Wanamaker: “We loved 
your father for himself and not because he had obligated 
us by contributing endowments or erecting buildings.” John 
Wanamaker was a faithful friend of this institution for 
thirty years. How seriously he took his duties is shown 
by the diaries and by the private files, where we found 
speeches conferring degrees, drafted in his own handwrit- 
ing. He enjoyed nothing more than the annual Commence- 
ments of the Pennsylvania Military College, at which he 
presided, as he did at the Williamson School, except when 
he happened to be abroad. In the office of president he 
was faithful to the end of his life. Pressure of business, 
other social invitations, and even considerations of health 
were not allowed to interfere with the June day set aside for 
Chester. In 1921 he conferred the degree of Doctor of 
Military Science upon General Pershing, and in 1922 on 
Secretary Weeks and Senator Pepper. On July 6, 1922, 
in answer to a letter from General Hyatt, who wrote of 
his “masterful power in the Armory Exercises, that con- 
tinues in you to-day, as ever a rare leader in thought and 
action,” he wrote: 


* The 1921 Commencement was the fifty-ninth of the college, but the 
one hundredth of the founding of the institution. On the margin of the 
program in the files is written in Wanamaker’s hand: “Ordered to begin with 
military precision: is late.” 


300 JOHN WANAMAKER 


The occasion of our last Commencement Day at the Pennsylvania 
Military College was one of the best ever, but I felt very far from being 
equal to the duties that fell upon me, eager as I was to make the best 
of the opportunity. I confess that I felt the importance of making the 
proper impression upon the cadets, but I had no idea, nor have I now, 
of being worthy of the splendid letter that you have written to me. 
I shall send a copy of it to my son in Paris, and I shall file the original 
away for inspiration, if I live to another Commencement Day, to try 
to do better for the great institution of which you are the worthy and 


honored chief. 


Wanamaker’s interest in the public schools of Philadel- 
phia began when he was a child at the Landreth School. 
He was unable to finish even the grammar grades. But no 
Philadelphian ever espoused more warmly and more con- 
tinuously the program of school extension, as the city grew, 
than he. Almost the first letter on a subject outside Oak 
Hall and Bethany that we found in the early files was 
his urgent plea in 1870 for a campaign on behalf of the 
public schools of Philadelphia, so that “when the Centen- 
nial visitors come here they may not go home saying that 
Philadelphia is backward in affording schooling opportuni- 
ties to every child in this growing city.” During the period 
of his active participation in municipal and state politics the 
needs of the public schools and the mismanagement of 
school funds were mentioned in almost every speech. 
Because of his many trips abroad and the imperative neces- 
sity of dividing his time between Philadelphia and New 
York, Wanamaker had been unable to yield to the strong 
inclination to accept membership on the Board of Educa- 
tion. But he did accept invitations to address school chil- 
dren when he could, and he took an active part in the move- 
ment for adequate buildings in different sections of the city. 
Of the public schools we find many mentions in his diary. 
The following is an illustration: 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 301 


I am waiting at the James Madison School at New Market and Green 
Streets to redeem a promise to speak to 1,200 scholars. ‘The classes are 
assembling and I may be called any minute. ‘This looks as if I am not 
very busy. But Iam. My first speech to-day was in the Buyers meeting 
at 9:30 in the Byzantine Hall. Since that I have been on a steady go, 
to such an extent that my morning mail must go with me to-night to 
N. Y. for attention there. . . . Members of the Board of Education did 
me the compliment of coming to the school talk. . . . It is now 7 p.m. 
I have taken the sales and R. W. waits to go home with me. 


After 1912 Wanamaker did not go abroad again, and 
he left the New York store very largely to his son Rodman. 
Consequently, when the Board of Judges again asked him 
if he would serve on the Board of Education, he consented, 
and was appointed on March 11, 1913. He was assigned 
to membership on the committees on elementary schools, 
normal and high schools for girls, and on qualifications of 
teachers. At the beginning of 1914 he was put on the 
committee on property, and on April 11, 1916, became 
a member of the committee on finance. Of this commit- 
tee, which directed the policies of the Board, he was made 
chairman on January 7, 1918, and served until his death. 

What John Wanamaker did for Philadelphia as a mem- 
ber of the Board of Education was called by an eminent 
Philadelphian “the most important and useful service he 
rendered to the city he loved.” It was a service that he 
regarded as a patriotic duty, and to it he gave unstintedly 
of his time and talents. Despite the difficulties he encoun- 
tered, which were not slight, the veteran merchant found 
in his work for the public schools a joy and satisfaction 
that was second only to what came to him in his Bethany 
work. He was in his element talking to children and fight- 
ing their battle; he respected the profession of public- 
school teacher and thought that it should be adequately 
paid; and he consistently took the position that what the 
schools needed to promote the welfare of the children of 


302 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Philadelphia came ahead of any other claims on the city 
treasury. 

A year after Wanamaker became a member of the Board, 
President William T. Tilden of the Union League said: 

“Mr. Wanamaker is serving under me on the Property 
Committee of the Board of Education. I have lived a life- 
time for that! But even now, when he is serving under 
me, he bosses the job, and when he stands up to say any- 
thing, the chairman might as well sit down.” 

Tilden was an old friend and admirer of Wanamaker’s, 
and understood him thoroughly. He knew the full scope 
of Wanamaker’s business ability, his vision, and his great 
heart; but there were others to whom the vehemence and 
positiveness of Wanamaker’s opinions came as a shock. It is 
possible that they felt that “the old man” was going to be 
only a perfunctory member; for he had so many irons in 
the fire. They did not know Wanamaker’s own saying, to 
wit, “Put no iron in the fire that you can’t watch being 
heated and then use afterward.” When Wanamaker took 
a job, he did all the work connected with it—and more! 

Wanamaker fought for proper ventilation and lighting 
of school buildings; and he went on a rampage over the 
unsanitary conditions that existed in some of the schools. 
He advocated special classes for backward children; social 
welfare work in the home; an increase in appropriations for 
medical and dental work among primary grades; and a 
special fund for psychological tests. He carried on a vig- 
orous campaign for raising teachers’ salaries." He declared 


*A fellow-member of the Board wrote to the biographer: “Wanamaker 
incurred the displeasure of some of his colleagues on the Board by a state- 
ment published in the newspapers to the effect that he had no patience with 
the claim that the Board had not means with which to pay reasonable salaries, 
saying further that the Board should mortgage its real estate, if necessary, 
in order to provide the money.” The private files show that in 1919 and 
1920 Wanamaker received hundreds of letters and resolutions from organiza- 
tions, clergymen of all persuasions, and especially social workers and teachers, 
thanking him for his successful effort to secure a bonus and salary increase 


INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 303 


that all the reports and recommendations of the superin- 
tendent and school principals, which were to come up for 
discussion, ought to be mailed to the members of the com- 
mittees several days before the meetings, so that they might 
be studied beforehand. He insisted that when complaints 
were made about the physical condition of school buildings 
or insufficient equipment in seating space, the question 
ought not to be discussed and settled at a meeting until 
after the committee members had made a personal investi- 
gation on the spot to find out what was complained of or 
what was wanted. When he failed to get satisfaction in 
the Board, generally because of the failure of Councils to 
appropriate sums recommended, he did not hestitate to 
carry the cause of the school children into the newspapers 
in the effort to mobilize public opinion in favor of better 
schools. 

Just to give one instance of his attention to detail, when 
he was chairman of the property committee in 1916, and the 
plans for enlarging the Northeast Manual Training School 
were before them, he called a meeting at eight a.m. at the 
school, in the northeastern section of the city. After look- 
ing at the plans, Wanamaker declared that they ought to 
think thirty years ahead." He said that the corridors were 
too narrow, and declared that it made for safety and ven- 
tilation and for the comfort of pupils in recess to have 
wide corridors. He encouraged Dr. Morrison, the princi- 


for public-school teachers. The letters reveal a serious situation in the Phila- 
delphia schools, and they indicate the great amount of time Wanamaker gave 
to painstaking investigation before he came out, virtually single-handed, to 
fight for this measure. 

* This school has now become the Northeast High School, and has grown 
in thirty-five years to 2,486 students and 106 teachers—all that the enlarged 
building can possibly accommodate. After the enlargement was finished, the 
enrollment was immediately over 2,000. The original plan to increase the 
facilities, against which Dr. Morrison had protested, called for accommoda- 
tion of only 1,800. Had not Mr. Wanamaker intervened energetically, the 
Northeast High School would have been insufficient to receive the applicants 
on the very day of its opening! 


304. JOHN WANAMAKER 


pal, to state exactly what he wanted, and promised to try 
to get it for him. He declared that the city was “not going 
to skimp money,” and that this new building was so impor- 
tant that he would recommend increasing the tax rate in 
order to make it “the right thing from every viewpoint.” 
Later, in advocating the appropriation and in insisting upon 
a very large gymnasium, he said: 

“During this next generation the most vital interest of 
this city and the nation is adequate public schools. Let us 
pay what is necessary to have adequate buildings, with every 
convenience and safety device, with light and ventilation, 
with space for future expansion. If we do not give the 
children of to-day the very best educational facilities the 
nation of to-morrow will reproach our memory.” 

In 1918, in the midst of the World War, Wanamaker 
created a sensation by abruptly leaving the room when the 
finance committee was in session, after declaring that he 
could not “go on with it while it continued to do things 
higeledy-piggledy.” The criticism was directed not so much 
at the committee as at the methods employed at City Hall, 
where, even in the midst of the war, politicians were think- 
ing of themselves and not of the real interest of the nation. 
Public opinion was with Wanamaker. He did not resign, 
but continued to serve until he died. Few quarreled with 
the objects he had in mind; and most Philadelphians were 
willing to make the financial sacrifices to attain them, believ- 
ing, as Wanamaker expressed it, that “the solidarity of our 
nation, its faithfulness to the ideals of our fathers, and its 
devotion to the flag, depend upon our public schools.” 


CHAPTER XXI 
A MILITANT TOTAL ABSTAINER 


ANAMAKER?’S abhorrence of strong drink came 

to him by precept and example in his own home 
and by the experiences of childhood. The rowdyism of the 
Schuylkill Rangers, the disturbances in the brickyards, the 
degradation of neighbors, caused him to grow up asso- 
ciating crime and failure in life with the use of alcohol. 
To him, drinking was the root of most of the troubles of 
society. Tobacco he disliked; alcohol he hated. 

At Tower Hall, when he was not yet sixteen, John car- 
ried a little book that he would take out on all occasions 
to induce people to sign their names to the pledge it con- 
tained. He had several of these books, in one of which 
there was a pledge for abstinence from tobacco as well. The 
opposition of the liquor interests during the first years of his 
Bethany work made him emphasize total abstinence as a 
cardinal doctrine of his Sunday-school teaching. He wanted 
everybody to take a pledge, man, woman, and child. 

It was the same in his business. At first his staff had to 
be total abstainers or they could not keep a job with him. 
Later he did not presume to dictate the personal habits of 
his store family when they were off duty. But whenever 
anyone was brought before him for inefficiency, lack of 
discipline, or theft, and whenever he made an investiga- 
tion of financial, marital, or health conditions because of 
an employee’s appeal for aid, drink was the first question 
he brought up. He wanted to know if drink had anything 
to do with the difficulty. If it had, he recommended a 

395 


306 JOHN WANAMAKER 


pledge; and there was always a pledge, ready to sign, in 
his desk drawer. 

John Wanamaker seemed able to preach total abstinence 
without getting himself disliked for it. The boy at Tower 
Hall was popular with everyone, and yet we know he pes- 
tered them to put their names under the pledge in his 
black book. He proved a drawing card and became the 
center of a group of young men all of whom professed 
to be fond of him when he was Y. M. C. A. secretary. 
These young fellows of his own age and older were not 
sycophants, because John was poor and unknown at the 
time. He was a feverish temperance propagandist in the 
Y. M. C. A. By his personality he gathered a group of 
devoted helpers around him at Bethany when conditions in 
Sunday-school work there were far from agreeable and the 
time was still years ahead when the Bethany superintendent 
could give financial help or a job in his store. At Bethany, 
too, he harped on total abstinence. 

As a boy and young man he must have been sincere and 
disingenuous in his espousal of the temperance cause. He 
must have disarmed with his enthusiasm those who might 
have taken offense. If,it had been merely the reformer’s 
zeal he might have earned the reputation of being a prig when 
he was young anda busybody later. But somehow we fail 
to find record of anyone who took exception to being tackled 
by John Wanamaker on the liquor question. Is not this 
because those whom he approached felt that it was a mat- 
ter of religious conviction with the boy and that he believed 
that signing the pledge was the way to serve God? Was 
it not also because there was nothing condemnatory in his 
attitude? He never denounced victims of alcohol. 

Probably the greatest work he ever did—certainly the 
most unostentatious—was that in connection with drunkards. 
He would argue with them, pray with them, plead with 


A MILITANT TOTAL ABSTAINER 307 


them, but never scold them. He did not lose faith in men 
who drank too much, but applied himself strenuously to 
reclaiming them. The Friendly Inn and what it repre- 
sented is one of the beautiful chapters of John Wanamaker’s 
life. When he was very young he had seen men go way 
down to the depths and come back. He knew nothing in 
the early days of brainstorms, maniac-depressive insanity, 
Freudian theories, and physiological explanations of the 
liquor habit and crime. He had only one remedy for the 
man who was down and out, and never once through his 
long life did he doubt the efficacy of this remedy. It was 
what he called “the miracle of grace,” and the pledge was 
simply an aid. His mother told him when he was a small 
boy that Christ redeemed man from sin. The most tangi- 
ble sins he ever came in contact with were, to his mind, 
the evils born of strong drink. “Christ can cure,” he said. 
And he used the formula. It never occurred to him that 
failures were due to any other cause than lack of faith. 

Once in the early days of Bethany, the superintendent 
gave a talk on temperance that people kept asking him to 
repeat for fifty years. He said: 

“Tf I was asked to give a young man a book for business, 
I would recommend the words of Solomon, whose wealth 
exceeded that of all our millionaires. Proverbs is full of 
push and pull, of warning and encouragement. You can 
eat what you please and drink what you please. You can 
go, and God puts no yoke on you. Eve ate herself out of 
Eden, and Esau ate up his birthright. Many men, head- 
strong and self-willed, drink out their lives with the fruit 
of the still. Wine isa mocker. It laughs at you. Even 
if I was an infidel, and not a Christian, I would say to 
you not to drink. But the advice wouldn’t do much good. 
For I couldn’t tell you how to resist drink. You can do 
that through Christ and only through Christ.” 


308 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Francis Murphy and John B. Gough were two of his 
heroes. He felt that they were fighters in a cause as sacred 
and far more difficult to triumph in than the Civil War. 
What he wrote about Gough, 'after hearin& him at the great 
temperance meeting of 1860, is as striking and as full of 
emotion as what he wrote about.Lincoln a year later. In 
1867 Wanamaker brought Gough to Philadelphia to speak 
at a meeting in Horticultural Hall, and he was the first 
“oreat man” entertained at the Wanamaker home. Over a 
quarter of a century later, speaking at his funeral, he proph- 
esied that the work of John B. Gough would one day be 
written into the hearts of men and into the laws of all lands. 

As an encouragement to others he used to sign the pledge 
along with those whom he had persuaded. Through these 
pledges, which he carefully saved from 1855 to 1921, we 
are able to establish John Wanamaker’s autograph at all 
periods of life, and to prove that the octogenarian had not 
abandoned his boyhood habit of campaigning for total absti- 
nence and praying with men whom he wanted to save from 
strong drink. 

He gave a great deal of thought to the form of the 
pledge. He started writing pledges long before he began 
to write advertisements. The same ability to present things 
attractively and to appeal to the imagination was revealed 
in both. The compositors at the Times Printing House 
used to say that the variety of form and dress given to the 
Wanamaker pledges followed the same general lines as the 
ways of expressing the Wanamaker business principles. He 
was all the time thinking up new names for pledges— 
names that responded to clauses inserted in the text. The 
Bethany Bible Union pledge, for instance, was called the 
“Life Line,” and contained a clause binding the signer to 
militant temperance work, likening him to a life-saver. 
When these pledges were passed around he would announce 


A MILITANT TOTAL ABSTAINER — 309 


the hymn, “Throw Out the Life Line.” The pledge, he 
declared, was not for weak men alone, but for strong men, 
for men who never drank, for all Christians. The pledge 
was something positive, not negative. Not only did it aid 
in enlisting workers for war on the liquor traffic, but it was 
also a subtle appeal to the pride and self-respect of the man 
who needed to sign a pledge for his own sake. 

Of the pledges of later years the most striking wasa litho- 
graph, which featured the American flag and the Liberty 
Bell under the caption, “A New Declaration of Independ- 
ence.” ‘For the good of my country and of my family,” 
it read, “I hereby separate myself from the drinking habit 
and the friendship of those who tempt me to use intoxi- 
cants. I now declare myself for total abstinence, and agree 
to abstain from the use of malt and spirituous liquors as 
a beverage. Given under my hand and seal this day and 
date,” etc. The witness was John Wanamaker. Signing 
the pledge in this form was in the nature of a ceremonial. 
Hundreds of men, most of them recalcitrant employees, 
went out of his private office after having put their names 
to this document with a John Hancockian feeling of having 
thrown off the yoke. 

At the Lincoln dinner in 1914 were distributed copies 
of a temperance pledge which John Wanamaker believed 
to have been “personally written by Abraham Lincoln,” 
and his guests were made to feel that in signing it they 
were showing their affection and loyalty to Lincoln. This 
was the year of the local-option campaign, sponsored by 
Governor Brumbaugh, which John Wanamaker prepared 
and largely underwrote. His idea in calling attention to 
the Lincoln pledge was to point out that “the pledge with 
teeth in it” bound the signer to enter heart and soul into 
every movement tending to destroy the saloon. Most of 
the Wanamaker pledges are ironclad, containing a clause 


B10 JOHN WANAMAKER 


in which the promise is made “not to go with any com- 
pany that will tempt me to drink or lose my manhood; and 
not to go intoa saloon.” Virtually all the pledges state that 
refraining from drink and fighting the liquor traffic are 
Christian duties. 

He had little faith in the efficacy of the Prohibition 
Party. To make the abolition of the liquor traffic a major 
political issue when the bulk of the American electorate 
did not so regard it seemed to him futile: It was putting 
the cart before the horse. He felt that it was the work of 
the churches to arouse sentiment against the use of alcohol, 
and that when enough church members became total abstain- 
ers and enlisted themselves under the banner of temperance, 
prohibition would come about automatically. To this end 
he advocated and supported liberally the educational tem- 
perance work of the Presbyterian Church. At Bethany he 
organized the White Ribbon Army, on December 7, 1884. 


Its declaration of purpose was: 


With charity for all and malice toward none, to make an aggressive 
campaign against strong drink and to save men, women, and children 
from the curse of rum, uniting ourselves under God as our captain, we 
will show our colors as a witness for the right, diligently work against 


the traffic in liquor, and strive, by all proper means, to lift men to a 
nobler life. 


At first this organization was on a military basis, with 
officers, and an effort was made to spread it, in this form, 
to Sunday schools and churches throughout the country. 
The movement did not succeed, through lack of an organi- 
zation to push it. But the idea of the white ribbon as 
the badge of hostility to liquor traffic was adopted by the 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the term 
“white ribboner” passed into common usage in the English 
language. 


In the local-option movement, and not in the Prohibition 


A MILITANT TOTAL ABSTAINER ROT 


Party, he saw the practicable means of legislating against 
the liquor trafic. It was always his contention—and he 
emphasized this during his brief active political career— 
that law enforcement was dependent upon public opinion, 
and that the corrective of the ills from which society was 
suffering was education. The people had to be taught the 
evil of the use of alcohol. It was far more important to 
get at the children in the Sunday schools, in Wanamaker’s 
opinion, and to awaken the conscience of older people, than 
to reform morals through legislation. He was by no means 
always consistent in this attitude; for he supported the old 
Sunday blue laws. But he was lukewarm toward political 
agitation for total abstinence legislation until the Anti- 
Saloon League began to make itself felt. He rejoiced in 
the success of the League’s militant work. He supported 
the Kenyon-Sheppard bill in 1911, to aid prohibition states 
by making interstate commerce in intoxicating liquors ille- 
gal where this commerce was clearly an evasion of the law 
of certain states. 

After the United States entered the World War, John 
Wanamaker was one of the first to bring pressure to bear 
upon Woodrow Wilson to enact by decree war-time prohi- 
bition. We have in his own handwriting the text of the 
telegram that he asked Bethany Sunday School to authorize 
him to send to the President. 


The Bethany Sunday School of Philadelphia, including the Bethany 
Temple and Memorial, six thousand strong, teachers and scholars, at the 
close of the temperance lesson to-day, May 20, 1917, earnestly urge 
the President of the United States to cause an Act of Congress to be 
passed to prohibit the making, selling, and using of malt and spirituous 
liquors during the war. 


The passage of the Prohibition Amendment was a sur- 
prise to him. He never expected that it would come in his 
day. But he believed that the time was ripe for it, and 


312 JOHN WANAMAKER 


he said that it indicated a great change wrought in public 
opinion by the quiet persistent educational work of which 
he had been an advocate all his life. He asserted that 
the Amendment was the result of seed sown in the Sunday 
schools. For the celebration of Amendment Day, Janu- 
ary 18, 1920, he prepared a card as President of the Penn- 
sylvania State Sabbath School Association, in which he said: 


For thirty years the Sunday schools of the land have taught a quar- 
terly Temperance Lesson, thereby helping to develop a leadership that 
has finally dethroned King Alcohol. 


During the last two years of his life John Wanamaker 
followed with keen anxiety the progress of the enforce- 
ment of the Amendment. He did not feel discouraged 
over bootlegging and violation of the law. But he grew 
very indignant when people said that the Amendment was 
the work of fanatics, and that there was more drinking 
than before the law went into effect. He was delighted 
with an article by Dr. Woods Hutchinson, in the July, 1922, 
issue of Hearst’s International Magazine. Dr. Hutchinson 
put up a strong case for the efficacy of the law, and pre- 
dicted the gradual disappearance of the illicit traffic in open 
form. Wanamaker sent marked copies of this magazine to 
people whom he had heard stating glibly that “prohibition 
does not prohibit.” 

His views of the Constitutional Amendment after two 
years are set forth in a letter written on May 9, 1922, to 
the secretary of the Law Enforcement League of Phila- 
delphia: 

On my return from the South, where I was compelled to go by my 
doctors’ orders to get rid of winter colds, an expression of opinion has 
been requested from me in regard to the enforcement of the Eighteenth 
Amendment. 


There can be no real difference of opinion regarding the necessity 
for the enforcement of this law, as well as any law that has been placed 


A MILITANT TOTAL ABSTAINER 313 


upon the statute books of the nation. To enforce one and not another 
is to breed disrespect for all law and weakens the whole fabric of our 
government. 

The Prohibition Amendment was adopted in the manner prescribed 
by our Constitution. It was not a hurried proceeding, or taken upon 
snap judgment, but was long foreshadowed by the Prohibition legislation 
enacted by the various states. 

It was peculiarly fitting that Prohibition should have come previous 
to the Amendment giving suffrage to the women, who are now real part- 
ners in the political life of the nation. What a humiliation it would 
have been to have invited our mothers, wives, and daughters to cast their 
votes in saloons, as was so often the case, and in an atmosphere of liquor 
and drunkenness, 

Personally, I believe in Prohibition, because in a long experience I have 
seen the evil and degrading effects of the liquor traffic and do not believe 
that it can be safely played with any more than can dope or dynamite. 

I think that the American people will never want to go back to the 
old régime, but if there are those who think otherwise, the same orderly 
procedure is open to them that took place in enacting the Prohibition 
Amendment. 

I write this in no spirit of censoriousness. It is what I conscientiously 
feel and believe to be for the greatest good and happiness of our common 
heritage. 


CHAPTER XXII 
THE FRIENDLY INN 


ROM the moment he first heard of General Booth’s 
work in London, Wanamaker was interested in the 
Salvation Army. To adapt the Gospel message to the new 
conditions caused by the industrial revolution of the nine- 
teenth century was a problem that commanded the time 
and thought of Wanamaker as much as similar problems 
in mercantile life. Old business methods did not meet 
changed conditions of city life; the concentration of popu- 
lation in large centers demanded new agencies and new ways 
of doing things in business. It was the same with the 
church. Wanamaker’s part in the early days of the Young 
Men’s Christian Association we have recorded. He once 
said that George Williams and William Booth had founded 
widely different organizations, working in widely different 
fields, but that they were equally essential auxiliaries of 
the church. In great cities, when church connections were 
broken for Protestants, there was neither the doctrinal hold 
nor the machinery such as the Catholic Church enjoyed for 
their churches to continue to be an influence in their lives. 
But Wanamaker believed that all agencies for Christian 
work failed in motive force and in constructive results unless 
individual Christians had “a keen and ever-present urge to 
communicate to others their own religious experience and 
thus bear testimony to the power of the Gospel,” as he 

put it.” 
* Wanamaker lived up to this belief at all times and in all places in his 


contact with all sorts of people. Numerous instances have come to the 
biographer to support this assertion. Wanamaker was as willing and ready 


314 


——— 


THE FRIENDLY INN 315 


We have been told by men who were intimately asso- 
ciated with the Wanamaker business through long years 
that the shrewdness and good sense of its founder some- 
times deserted him when he was dealing with “no-account 
employees.” ‘He never learned that derelicts were a hope- 
less job to reform,” declared one of these, “and once he 
took up a man, he would hold on to him to grim death— 
even spend his time praying with the fellow in his office!” 

But Wanamaker did not accept the word “derelict.” He 
believed, with Whittier, that no man could “drift beyond 
God’s love and care.” The convictions and habits of Chris- 
tian work formed in his youth were never given up. He 
did not go beyond or feel the need to discard the simple 
formula that “Christ can save.” He refused to subordi- 
nate it to new theories of human behavior or to experi- 
mental principles of applied sociology. He accepted as 
facts, of course, inherited tendencies to drink and crime; 
handicaps and adverse conditions created by poverty, lack 
of parental guidance, and misfortunes; and the destruction 
of moral and social inhibitions through mental disorders. 
But that those who were down and out could be restored 
to society by “the power of the Cross” more surely than 
by man-made formule or treatment he never doubted. 
That it was every Christian’s duty to do his part in apply- 
ing the sole effective means of “casting out devils” was 
a conviction always with him. One’s personal witness to 
Christ, he affirmed, must be made at all times and to all 
men. Hence the natural recourse to prayer and religious 
exhortation in his private office when he was dealing with 
the mistakes, the weaknesses, the yielding to temptation, 
to speak to men in the highest position concerning Christ, and to offer to 
reason and pray with them, as he was with his employees and those who 
came to Bethany and with the men who sought the hospitality of the Friendly 


Inn. He used to say that everybody needed salvation and that he was not 
“ashamed of Jesus.” . 


316 JOHN WANAMAKER 


of employees. Hence the persistence of his faith in men 
despite the proof that it had been misplaced. Hence the 
Friendly Inn. 

A man whom he had known slightly some years before 
in Y. M. C. A. work came to Wanamaker in the latter 
part of 1893. Wanamaker assumed that he wanted a job, 
and offered him one in the store. But Thomas T. Horney 
answered, “No, I have a work to do for men, and I must 
do it.’ He explained that long experience in city missions 
had brought him to the opinion that “down-and-outs” did 
not need charity. Most agencies, like policemen, were 
engaged in the easy task of just keeping them moving. 
Horney believed that if he had a place where derelicts 
would come for lodgings, so that he could get hold of 
them, they could be put on their feet by direct personal 
work. He would make them earn their way, not as a 
punishment, but as a step toward rehabilitation. He would 
restore their self-respect and follow them with encourage- 
ment until they were fully on their feet. 

“What will you say to them to effect this transforma- 
tion?” asked Wanamaker. 

“That Christ can cleanse and Christ can heal,” was the 
prompt response. 

No more was needed. Wanamaker told Horney that he 
had made up his mind long ago to do work of this kind, 
and that he would spend $100,000 if Horney could do 
what he said he could. Horney went out from the inter- 
view with the promise of full support. 

Horney was unfamiliar with Philadelphia, and it took 
him some time to study the situation and pick out his place. 
He finally settled on an old building, formerly the medical 
department of the University of Pennsylvania, which had 
been for years a second-rate hotel. He did not want it 
fixed up and furnished too well, and spent much less than 


THE FRIENDLY INN 317 


Wanamaker was willing to invest in the work. Horney 
kept insisting that if the venture were to be successful it 
must be largely self-supporting, and he told Wanamaker 
that in his own case, after he had got the work well started, 
he would be glad to have a job in the store, and carry 
on the Friendly Inn as his “volunteer work for the Lord.” 

The Friendly Inn was dedicated by John Wanamaker 
on October 21, 1895. He had never set foot in it before 
that evening, although his investment amounted to over 
$75,000. All had been left to Horney. In his opening 
address Wanamaker said that the Friendly Inn was to be 
a self-supporting hotel for self-respecting men, and that if 
it was very simply run it was because the guests did not 
care to pay for luxuries. Many men are blessed with quick 
sympathy with others and an intuitive perception of how 
others feel; but the felicitous expression of this understand- 
ing is the gift of few. Wanamaker got along with people, 
no matter how awkward or unusual the circumstances, 
because they felt his kindliness, and he knew how to put 
them at their ease without delay." Two years of close 
study of the life and writings of Wanamaker have led the 
biographer to think that possibly the epitaph that best fits 
him would be, “He sat in judgment on no man.” 

It was this spirit that prompted the founding of the 
Friendly Inn; it was the keynote of the opening night and 
all the days that followed during the twenty-seven years 
of Wanamaker’s devotion to his fellow-men through the 

* One of the executives in the Philadelphia store remembers that when he 
was a cash boy he mustered up courage to go into Wanamaker’s office to 
show him a new and cheap way to wrap small packages that he thought he 
had discovered. ‘He was sitting at his flat-top desk, and I quickly passed to 
him a sample package I had wrapped. As I did so my sleeve caught on the 
inkwell and upset it.” The horrified boy stood rooted to the spot. Wana- 
maker said: “Now I am going to show you something. If you attack a pool 
of ink with the edge of a blotter, instead of stamping the blotter flat down 


on it, it is astonishing how quickly it disappears.” The devotion of a life- 
time of able service was thus won in a minute. 


318 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Friendly Inn. He did not judge. He did not condemn. 
He did not criticize, scold, chide. He simply told men 
that if they willed they could be made whole, that no man 
had any health in him, and that all men could, like Paul, 
do all things through Christ who strengthened them. 

When its founder died in 1922, the register of the 
Friendly Inn recorded a million and a quarter lodgings, 
a million and a half meals, and nearly a million baths. 
Those were the figures, eloquent in themselves, but they 
did not tell the story. That only two men knew. Through 
all those years Horney remained in charge. At first he 
devoted himself night and day to launching the work and 
getting it going; after several years he gave his spare time 
to the Friendly Inn and Bethany, and has now for many 
years been employed in the Wanamaker store. 

Although the Friendly Inn was included, at its founder’s 
request, among the Bethany activities in 1897 and was an 
object of interest and devotion to Bethany people, it 
remained peculiarly the personal work of two men. It was 
never out of Wanamaker’s mind and heart. A friend once 
offered to make an initial contribution of $100,000 to 
enlarge the Friendly Inn and then to share in whatever 
expenses of maintenance there might be. Wanamaker 
refused. He said that there was room for another work 
of the kind—for many more—in Philadelphia and other 
cities. But if his Friendly Inn became big and institu- 
tional, he felt that it would be spoiled, that the more sensi- 
tive types of men who needed its ministrations would not 
come or would be repelled after they did come. The object 
of having the bedrooms and restaurant was to enable 
Horney to get into contact with men who needed the mes- 
sage he could give. And with the work as it was, Wana- 
maker himself could meet and talk with the men that 
Horney wanted to bring to him. 


THE FRIENDLY INN 319 


In speaking of the Friendly Inn, John Wanamaker said 
that it was God’s work, and not man’s, to make saints out 
of wrecks overnight. All the Inn could do was to lay its 
finger on the diseased spot in the man and to deal with 
cause, first, last, and all the time. No man was cheered and 
comforted by being allowed to think that he could dodge 
responsibility for his acts. But the effort was made to dis- 
criminate carefully in classifying them. A crook was dealt 
with as a crook; he was told that he was not deceiving 
Wanamaker and Horney; frankness resulted in the disap- 
pearance of the man or the winning of his full confidence. 
The Friendly Inn was kept at 150 beds because it was 
Wanamaker’s belief that men could not “be intelligently 
helped in crowds and that is where most well-intended 
efforts have fallen down.” 

The testimony of men who had grasped the helping hand 
held out to them would make a beautiful chapter in the 
life of John Wanamaker. The letters are a revelation. 
Wanamaker’s prompt and inspiring answers are a revela- 
tion. Is it possible for simply friendliness, a Bible mes- 
sage, and a prayer, to take a man, penniless, unkempt, and 
despairing, off the streets and send him home to become a 
prominent member of his community, even governor of his 
state or a judge on the bench? Is it possible to win a 
man who has had a brainstorm from a life of sin and degra- 
dation and send him back to his wife and children? Wana- 
maker could give a positive affirmative answer to these 
questions. But what the men of the Friendly Inn wrote 
to him and what he wrote to them is too sacred for the 
printed page. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 


HE crusading spirit of Wanamaker singled out Sab- 

bath-breaking and drinking as the outstanding evils 
of society. He had been taught by his mother to believe 
that it was a sin to fail to observe the Sabbath in the good 
old Puritan fashion and that it was a sin to drink. His 
father and grandfather were Sabbatarians and total abstain- 
ers. They had for friends only people of like standards 
of conduct. The neighborhood in which the Wanamaker 
children grew up contained some families that were, in the 
eyes of the Wanamakers, “godless.” It was constantly 
pointed out to John how those that failed to keep the Sab- 
bath got into trouble and how filth, hopeless poverty, and 
misery were the lot of those who drank. 

When he grew up he came to know people of character 
and position who did not share his ideas of how Sunday 
should be spent and who used alcohol. When European 
travel became a part of his life he realized that a radically 
different attitude toward Sunday did not imply irreligion 
and that the use of alcoholic beverages did not necessarily 
entail economic and social distress. This knowledge made 
him more tolerant of others; but it did not modify his own 
practices and teaching. He kept on to the end of his life 
insisting upon strict observance of the Sabbath as a means 
of grace in the Christian life, and he never gave up actively 
waging war against liquor. 

He was an example of how a man can stick by the con- 
victions of his youth without modification, despite sweeping 

320 


THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 321 


changes in the circumstances and conditions of his life. 
When John was a boy it never occurred to him to spend 
his Sundays in any other way than the way his family spent 
them. As he grew up he did not regard Sunday-school 
work and church duties as a burden. They kept his Sun- 
days pleasurably occupied until he died. He married a 
girl whose upbringing and tastes were similar to his own. 
When he acquired wealth and prominence and became a 
man of international activity and influence, wherever he 
went he was constantly being sought after to do all sorts 
of attractive things on Sunday. But he remained what he 
had been asa boy. Sunday was a day set apart. 

Many high-minded men feel that they ought not to 
refuse to fall in with the manner of life and thinking of 
the people around them when they have gone from one 
social environment to another or are living temporarily 
away from the home atmosphere. They believe in the 
principle of doing in Rome what the Romans do. They 
find themselves able to change their habits to suit cir- 
cumstances. Wanamaker became very much a man of the 
world in matters where deep rooted principles were not at 
stake. But he was always a teetotaller and a Sabbatarian. 
The occasion never arose when he had to take a drink or 
to work on Sunday. Early in life, when business exigen- 
cies seemed to demand an exception to his Sabbath rule, he 
said: 

“You might as well try to get a living thing out of the 
Dead Sea as to attempt to find the man who is forced to 
work on Sunday. Men are too easily influenced by the 
demands made upon them. Worldly toil has a tendency to 
occupy our minds to the exclusion of the affairs of God. 
Therefore God has set aside the Sabbath to lead us to 
think of another world—an exercise essential to our living 
souls.” 


Ryde) JOHN WANAMAKER 


An early example of Wanamaker’s steadfastness to prin- 
ciple is his attitude toward Sunday opening at the time of, 
the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. His heart was set for 
years upon making the Centennial a success, and none 
worked harder than he. But he fought Sunday opening 
tooth and nail, and did not hestitate to risk losing valuable 
supporters. Against great odds he won out.” 

He was a believer in the work of the Philadelphia Sab- 
bath Association, of which he was president for forty years, 
and of the Lord’s Day Alliance in New York, the Board 
of Directors of which he had the habit of entertaining 
at luncheon in his private office. He served on the com- 
mittee on Sabbath observance of the Presbyterian General 
Assembly. 

How he lived up to his convictions is shown by his 
refusal to advertise on Sunday. He was the undisputed 
pioneer in every other form of newspaper advertising. But 
he would never have anything to do with Sunday news- 
papers. He would not read them, of course, and he did 
not believe it was right to encourage them by putting store 
advertisements in them. Up to the end of his life he 
was urged by newspaper people and by some of his own 
employees to modify his rule. Reports were submitted 
to him as late as 1919 showing how other great stores had 
extraordinary crowds as a result of Sunday advertising, and 
pointing out the serious handicap his own people labored 
under when they were forbidden to do anything to meet 
this competition. John Wanamaker was adamant, and his 
son Rodman has followed the same policy. 

That Sunday advertising was essential or ever would be 
essential to business John Wanamaker flatly denied. He 
did not seem to suffer by failure to use the Sunday news- 
papers. And he would have been able to cite the only other 


*See above, vol. i, p. 159. 


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THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 7323 


merchant in America comparable with him, had he cared 
to do so, who built his life and business upon the same 
rigid Sabbatarian principles as Wanamaker. Marshall 
Field never gave an advertisement to a Sunday paper; and 
with a business increasing every year more than that of any 
other department store in Chicago, the firm has followed 
the policy of the founder. 

One of the greatest blows Wanamaker ever had was when 
his son, Thomas B. Wanamaker, decided to issue a Sunday 
edition of The North American. The father fought hard 
against the project. Tom, safely out of the way in Paris, 
wrote to his father that it simply had to be, that no news- 
paper could live in the twentieth century without a Sunday 
edition. John Wanamaker countered by offering to buy 
the paper. Tom refused. After The North American 
finally came out on a Sunday, Wanamaker went before the 
pastors and elders of Bethany and had the following minute 
entered: 


Elder John Wanamaker at a meeting of the Session held in connec- 
tion with the Communion Service, Sabbath Evening, September 29, 
stated that he had felt greatly perplexed and embarrassed by the deter- 
mination of his son, Thomas B. Wanamaker, to issue a Sunday edition 
of The North American, Mr. Wanamaker stated that he had no interest 
in the ownership,of The North American and that it was entirely owned 
and controlled by Thomas B. Wanamaker. 

Elder Wanamaker further stated that when it came to his knowledge 
that it was the purpose of his son to issue a Sunday edition of his paper, 
he had used every endeavor to persuade his son, out of regard for his 
father’s convictions and public position regarding the observance of the 
Sabbath, to give up such a purpose, going so far as to offer to purchase 
from his son the entire property of The North American that he might be 
able to control the policy of the paper, or to make good any supposed 
financial loss that might result from the abandonment of the purpose. 

After hearing the statement of Elder Wanamaker, the Session unani- 
mously voted to record it in the minutes of Bethany Church, and also 
to record the sympathy of the Pastors and Elders of the Church with 


324 JOHN WANAMAKER 


our beloved Brother in this peculiar trial. We feel confident that the 
influence of our fellow-worker will be increased rather than impaired by 
the deep sorrow he has been called upon to endure and by the faithful 
protest he has felt compelled to make. It is the prayer of his brethren 
that the Master may show him very soon that this severe trial has a 


gracious purpose. 


Although he was so deliciously frank and humble in con- 
fiding in others and in explaining to others his own stand 
in questions of Christian conduct, he did not allow fanatics 
to dictate to him. The North American incident illustrates 
how John Wanamaker felt and acted, for conscience’s sake, 
in an extremely complicated situation. There was much 
to be said on his son Tom’s side, from the worldly point 
of view, and the father knew it. But he preferred to lose 
money rather than see a principle he held dear violated. 

On the other hand, he was firm, though gentle, when 
his associates in the Philadelphia Sabbath Association went 
too far in their interpretation of what constituted Sabbath- 
breaking. For instance, in 1917, moving pictures were 
introduced in the summertime in Bethany Sunday School; 
and the church advertisement stated that there would be 
“patriotic or religious moving pictures.” Dr. Mutchler, 
secretary of the Sabbath Association, wrote a vehement 
protest to the Bethany superintendent, ending with a virtual 
threat of prosecution under the 1794 blue law. Wana- 
maker answered promptly that Dr. Mutchler was wrong in 
stating that Bethany people did not like the pictures and 
that “the principal protest was a very impertinent and 
extremely injudicious letter of a minister, being from the 
Rev. Mr. Shelley, if I have his name correctly, which you 
brought with you when you first saw me on the subject.” 
He concluded: 


With my old friendship for you and a lifetime of devotion to the 
support of the Word of God—in a feeble way, perhaps—in maintaining 


THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 325 


respect for the Sabbath, I have only to say further that I will be quite 
prepared to meet the apparent threat of your letter to consider the sub- 
ject from the legal standpoint which you have raised. 


Wanamaker believed that the Christian Lord’s Day was 
the successor of the Jewish Sabbath, and in his teaching 
at Bethany he used Old Testament texts to justify his con- 
tention as to how the Lord’s Day should be observed. 
Although he was an admirer of Martin Luther, he either 
did not know or did not accept the Lutheran view of Sun- 
day. In 1899 he wrote to his Bible Union from Paris: 


Paris people are not church-goers, and even Christian travelers are too 
often like the summering holidayers, neglectful of Church privileges; 
as though sight-seeing, driving, and walking form such an observance of 


the Sabbath as the Lord calls us to. 


Just as he linked up total abstinence with patriotism, he 
was able to make himself believe that the Old Testament 
idea of Sabbath-keeping was as necessary to a nation’s well- 
being as patriotism, and that it was the function of the 
United States to bear witness to the world of the sanctity 
of the Sabbath day. At a luncheon the year before his 
death he said: 

“Our flag is all around us, and what a beautiful flag, 
preaching a sermon to the world. But we need something 
more than that flag. The thing we need is to know and 
live the meaning of those words, ‘Ye shall keep my sab- 
baths and reverence my sanctuary.’ ” 

This conviction led John Wanamaker to support by voice 
and purse every effort made by religious organizations to 
uphold the old Pennsylvania “blue law” of 1794. He 
justified this attitude as follows: 


Reverence is the very soul of religion, and when our children lose 
the sacred regard for God’s day, their reverence for the name of God 
and the word of God and the house of God must inevitably diminish 
to the same extent. The preservation of the Christian Sabbath requires 


326 JOHN WANAMAKER 


that Christian people must organize for this purpose: to resist the power- 
ful organizations which are formed to destroy our salutary Sunday law. 
This law is by no means intended to compel anybody to attend Church 
or accept the Gospel. It simply protects the Christian element of our 
population to which the nation owes its existence and its perpetuation, in 
its inalienable right to worship God on this Holy Day, unmolested by 
secular trafic and the distractions of the world. It also guarantees to 
laboring men a day of rest each week, which unscrupulous and powerful 
corporations dare not ruthlessly ignore. God pity the masses of our 
toilers, if this, their one strong arm of kindly protection, shall be with- 
drawn from their defense. 


As in the case of total abstinence, scriptural and moral 
arguments were mixed up with economic and social grounds 
in defense of Sabbath legislation. Wanamaker’s interest 
in the Lord’s Day Alliance, extending over thirty-four 
years, was directed toward defense of legislation already 
on the statute books to keep Sunday free from amusements 
and unnecessary work. Frequently he spoke of foreign and 
un-Christian influences trying to undermine the life and 
spirit of the nation by introducing the continental idea 
of Sunday. He urged the Christian Sabbath “to oppose 
Bolshevistic tendencies.” He used to write to the news- 
papers; he would draw up resolutions; he would pay legal 
expenses. In this work he felt that he was acting as a 
patriot as well as a churchman. 

As late as 1917 the name of John Wanamaker appeared 
on a report to the Presbyterian General Assembly at Dallas, 
Texas, on Sabbath observance, and one of the resolutions 
indorsed by him was: 


That the General Assembly hereby reiterates its emphatic condemna- 
tion of the Sunday newspaper, and urges the members of the Presbyterian 
Church to refuse to subscribe to it or read it or advertise in it. 


In the last year of his life there was nothing that he was 
more interested in than the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial. 


THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 927 


He at first suggested it in 1916. He was the only surviv- 
ing member of the Centennial Board. He hoped to live to 
see a great international exposition held in Philadelphia in 
1926. It was his belief that the man who should run this 
was Secretary Hoover of the Department of Commerce. 
Solicitor-General James M. Beck approached Mr. Hoover, 
and telegraphed: 


Secretary Hoover suggests Sunday evening, December 11. Will this 
suit Mr. Wanamaker? Answer. 


Mr. Wanamaker replied that he would not be willing 
to attend a dinner for business purposes on Sunday evening, 
and that Mr. Hoover would have to come some other day. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
BETHANY 


HE story of Bethany, like that of the Wanamaker 

business, if an attempt were made to tell it ade- 
quately, would leave us little space for anything else. The 
biographer, therefore, whose interest is the life and char- 
acter of the man, makes no excuse for omissions. 

We have already seen how vital and engrossing a part 
Bethany played during the formative years of Wanamaker’s 
career, and how this interest continued unbroken through 
the momentous decade and the crowded period of Cabinet 
service. It remained the same till the very end of his life.’ 
After 1893 there were more frequent and prolonged 
sojourns in Europe; New York claimed much time; and 
a rest in Florida was prescribed in the late winter and 
early spring of every year. But these enforced absences 
did not lessen Wanamaker’s interest in his church and 
Sunday school and by a remarkable tour de force he man- 
aged to maintain his contact with Bethany folk in such a 
way that his personality still dominated the growing and 
changing activities of the great work he had planted and 
watered at T'wenty-second and Bainbridge Streets. He 
would not have called it a tour de force. It only appears 
that to one who studies Bethany objectively as a Wana- 
maker activity. He would not have called it that because 


*In the latter days Wanamaker said to a reporter: “I have made it the 
rule of my life to be in my regular place each Lord’s Day when in health 
and in the country, believing that Paul was inspired to write that we should 
not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. For four years while 
Postmaster-General I traveled nearly one hundred thousand miles in order 
to be present each week at my own church.” 


328 





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FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA 





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330 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to him it was not that. If any burden he carried was ever 
irksome (and we doubt if any was) Bethany was certainly 
the least irksome. He loved the people there. He wanted 
to keep in close personal contact with them. He believed in 
the Church’s mission. As with his business, he felt that it 
must constantly grow, seize upon every opportunity for 
service, and adapt itself to whatever conditions it faced— 
not after the conditions were actually confronting it but 
anticipating them. 

Not from a sense of duty, but because he had a real 
joy in being what he called “folksy,” he refused to allow 
himself to fall into the easy habit of the busy man to regard 
people collectively. All who attended Bethany Church 
and Sunday School were individuals, just as much his 
friends as he was their friend.” He felt that his duties 
as senior elder of the church and superintendent of the 
Sunday school were not fulfilled by helping the pastors to 
run things and by conducting services. He prided himself 
on calling people by name, from oldest to youngest, to take 
them by the hand, to know how they were getting along; 
and none was more patient in listening to the troubles of 
others. In many instances he knew by their first names, not 
only the children, but the mothers and fathers, grand- 
mothers and grandfathers. On his sixtieth birthday he told 
a friend that he could call “about four thousand people 
down there by name, and associate each one with his family 

*A member of the Bible Union writes us: “On July 4, 1899, we were 
walking with our children on a street near Bethany, when some one called 
after us. In a carriage and pair, with coachman and footman, Mr. Wana- 
maker was beckoning us to come and meet President: Harrison, to whom he 
said, ‘These are some of my people.?” In his diary, dated Plaza Hotel, 
New York, February 10, 1909, is this entry: “I am going to bed very early 
to get all the rest I can for to-morrow, that I may go over to the Bethany 
Fifty-first Anniversary. Of course I shall not speak with my weak throat, 


but if I am able to just be around it will please the old people who have like 
myself been there so long.” 


BETHANY 331 


or business or with some connection so that they are sure I 
really do know them.” He did not regard this as a feat 
of memory. He explained it by saying that he was “inter- 
ested in them—why shouldn’t I know them?” 

In dealing with an immense church organization and its 
extension work it was necessary for him to have a system. 
He kept address books, with notes about people, and as the 
work grew, he had professional helpers to preserve the con- 
stant contact with his Bethany and John Chambers Memo- 
rial friends. There was also a secretary for the Bible 
Union. This machinery, however, would have availed 
little in maintaining the personal touch had he not studied 
the reports made to him and had he not seized every oppor- 
tunity for greetings. At church and Sunday school anni- 
versaries, Easter, Christmas, and other celebrations and 
gatherings (there were many of them) he gave out the 
cards or other tokens prepared for the occasion. His hand- 
shake was never impersonal, and the “Merry Christmas” 
or “Happy New Year” was said with a smile and some 
word to every one. Through all the years unbroken asso- 
ciation with “Bethany folk” enabled him to make them feel 
that he was one of them. Until her health failed Mrs. 
Wanamaker was his invaluable aid in this intimate work. 
As an elder of the church he passed the bread and wine 
at communion services up to the last year of his life, and he 
found time to visit the sick and to attend funerals. 

At Sunday-school picnics he marched ahead of the band 
from the train to the grounds, stood at the gate and greeted 
everybody, and at luncheon passed from table to table. No 
amusement or game failed to get his attention, and he loved 
to give out jumping ropes and hoops to the little children. 
He invited the members of the Roman Legion of the Bible 
Union to Lindenhurst every Labor Day, and devoted him- 


332 JOHN WANAMAKER 


self to them when they came." For the men of the John 
Chambers Memorial Church he gave a dinner on Lincoln’s 
birthday.” There were Lindenhurst picnics, and occasional 
dinners in town, for the choir and orchestra. He made 
much of Children’s Day, Mother’s Day, and patriotic days; 
and he inaugurated an Old Folk’s Day at Bethany.* The 
Dawn Service in the early hours of the new year was his 
especial joy. Believing that “God giveth the increase,” 
he was faithful at prayer meeting, and used to urge others 
to attend. It was his care to see that the Sunday-school 
children joined the church, and he made these occasions an 
opportunity for reaching their parents. 

The Bethany correspondence in the private files is amaz- 
ing in the number and variety of the letters and their range 
of half a century. It is an example of the old adage that 


*The Lindenhurst picnics grew into a great feature of the Bethany 
Brotherhood, looked forward to keenly by all those who qualified for an 
invitation by committing to memory a chapter of the book of Romans. 
Wanamaker called them his “Roman Legion.” He generally gave them 
books as a souvenir of their “day in the woods.” ‘That Wanamaker enjoyed 
these outings is evident from his diary. In 1909 we find: ‘About noon 
they began to come, those dear men, little groups continuing to file up 
through the woods here and there, and so the lawn and fields were humming 
with their laughter and shouts.” And in 1911: “I have only a short morn- 
ing, as I must go back home to play host to the men who are invited by 
the noon train, but who always begin to come about nine. We shall have a 
fine crowd—and sports, followed by hot corn and roast potatoes from the 
ashes of the fire burning at the quarry. Robert Jackson will operate on the 
old croquet ground upon watermelons, sandwiches, and cider barrel, to say 
nothing of the cows, and several pear and apple trees that he shakes 
merrily.” 

* The Lincoln dinners were begun in 1911, as an anniversary celebration 
of the Men’s Friendly Union and were held in the church. Wanamaker 
always invited fifty or more outsiders; and the most prominent Philadelphians 
accepted invitations, An elaborate menu card was prepared, and there were 
generally souvenirs in the form of books. The 1915 dinner was addressed 
by Billy Sunday, who succeeded in getting many diners to “hit the trail.” 

“Wanamaker provided transportation for all who could not otherwise 
come, and luncheon at the church so that they could stay to Sunday school. 
He made the principal address, and gave souvenirs to the old folks, and 
once a large print copy of the Psalms especially ordered in London in the 
Coronation year. After Mrs. Wanamaker’s death the gift was a book that 
she prized and found inspiration in—Daily Strength for Daily Needs. 


BETHANY Aa 


the busiest man has the most time, and reveals, more than 
anything else with the exception of the Friendly Inn corre- 
spondence, the genuine and vital interest of John Wana- 
maker in his fellow-men. We shall not attempt to quote 
from these files, nor from the circular letters Wanamaker 
sent out periodically to the various Bethany organizations. 
From the Bethany papers we glean letters sent back for 
publication, describing his travels and his thoughts for 
Bethany when he was on the ocean and at European water- 
ing-places. Letters to individuals were published, for 
example: 
Norge, -July 10, 1899 
MIDNATSSOLENSLAND 


Dear little man of the Golden Text and Verses: Did you ever have 
a man away up here among the ice and bears and whales, 4,000 miles 
away, thinking about you? Well, that’s what I am doing. You think 
of me sometimes and you see I think of you. The sun never goes down 
any farther here than you see it in the picture, and it is daylight all 
night long and hard to sleep. I am glad we both live at Bethany. 


Your Teacher, 


JoHN WANAMAKER. 


The diaries show that when he was traveling, and espe- 
cially when he was at Carlsbad, he had the habit of spend- 
ing some time every day getting off picture postcards to 
Bethany friends. He would keep steadily at it, writing 
each one in his own hand, and in the space reserved for 
correspondence he would send personal messages. He knew 
that Brotherhood men, treasuring these cards, would com- 
pare notes. He had them classified according to trades, 
and he would pick out cards that would suggest or illustrate 
a message referring to each man’s occupation. He devoted 
all his spare minutes to this task. The average membership 
of the Brotherhood was twelve hundred; and they were 
only a quarter—or less—of the Bethany enrollment. To 


334 JOHN WANAMAKER 


have written these cards one year would have been a feat 
to the ordinary man. Wanamaker did it year after year. 
He never stopped. 

As much as he could he went to the homes of Bethany 
people. This was how he started the work when he was 
twenty, young and obscure. As he prospered, he did not 
give up the hours, snatched at odd times, of visiting his 
people in their homes. He liked to do it, and he knew 
that all the money he spent at Bethany would count for 
nothing if he gave up the visiting. A fine building, with 
fine music and fine preaching, would never make a great 
Sunday school and church. He used to tell the pastors 
that when he felt they were letting up on their pastoral 
visitation, and he set them the example of unremitting zeal. 
He accomplished a great deal of the visiting—as he accom- 
plished everything else—by using his head. On the way in 
from Lindenhurst he would stop to see shut-ins and sick 
people near whose homes he would have to pass, bringing 
them flowers; and when he went to Bethany on Sundays 
and in the evenings, he always had a few people to see 
coming and going. He never stayed long, but just to have 
John Wanamaker appear for a moment brought joy and 
comfort to his people. All this we know from the touch- 
ing letters he received. There are indications in his diary 
of how he found time for folks. On his way to a Masonic 
banquet in 1903, where a thousand had gathered to do him 
honor, he 





Went to Mrs. *s and met about 25 of her kin celebrating the 
kindness of her Scotch lord of a husband, a simple-hearted carpenter. 
I took coffee and a bit of cake she had saved for me. All but a crumb 
that I had to take to let her say I ate something in her house I slipped 
in my pocket. 


Dr. Francis E. Clark, father of the Christian Endeavor 


BETHANY 335 


movement, was once asked to preach at Bethany when the 
pulpit was vacant. Of his experiences that day he wrote: 


He asked me, in an interregnum between pastorates at Bethany Church, 
to preach there one Sunday and stay with him. I thought I knew what a 
busy Sunday was, having frequently had from four to seven services in 
one day. But that one in Bethany was the record in my experience, with 
nine services, and a sermon or short talk at each of them. 

But Mr. Wanamaker outdid me, and attended eleven services that day 
—a regular diet with him. He had his lunch sent over to the church, 
as he could not afford time to go home, though it was not far away. 

On the way home from the last afternoon service he said, “I must 
look up one of my Sunday-school scholars; I have missed her for two 
or three Sundays.””» Who would have thought he would miss one lamb 
in a flock of thousands? We soon found the house in a poor quarter, and 
climbed two or three flights of stairs; and there in a clean but very 
scantily furnished room he found the little girl whom he had missed. 
He chided the girl for not having sent him word of her illness. ‘‘Oh,” 
said she, ““Mr. Wanamaker, you were so busy I could not.” Before we 
went we all kneeled down on the bare floor, while in simple words he 


asked God’s blessing on her and her family and Sunday-school class. 


The busy day to which Dr. Clark referred was the carry- 
ing out of this schedule: 


9:30 A.M.—Met the leaders of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew and 
St. Philip. Spoke ten minutes. 
9:45 A.M.—Met the Brotherhood members, 394 men. ‘Talked twenty 
minutes, 
10:15 A.M.—Spoke to the boys’ junior Bible class, 
10:45 A.M.—Sat with the men at the regular morning service and 
offered a prayer. 
12:00 noon—Shook hands with those at the service. 
12:30 P.M.—Left Bethany and went to his home, 2032 Walnut Street. 
2:00 P.M.—Attended and spoke at a meeting of the Tithesmen of 
the Bible Union. 
2:30 P.M.—Opened the Sunday school. 
3:10 P.M.—Made a short address to the Juniors. 
3:15 P.M.—Expounded the lesson before the Bible Union. 
4:10 P.M.—Closed the Sunday-school services with a short talk. 


336 JOHN WANAMAKER 


4:25 P.M.—Conducted the 20-minute closing afternoon “experience” 
service. 

4:45 P.M.—Shook hands with those at the service. 

5:30 P.M.—Started for his home. 

7:30 P.M.—Attended the song service. 

7:45 P.M.—Attended regular evening service. 

8:45 P.M.—Spoke twenty minutes at close of service. 

9:00 P.M.—Shook hands with those at service. 

9:30 P.M.—Went home. 


Is it any wonder that Thomas B. Wanamaker used to 
say of his father that after two Sundays at Bethany, with 
a week at business thrown in between, the benefit of ninety 
days’ rest would be dissipated in nine?* As the years 
brought greater burdens in church and business and as John 
Wanamaker’s position in the world demanded the expendi- 
ture of much time and energy in social activities outside 
of Bethany, it would have been natural and reasonable to 
expect that he would gradually delegate church duties to 
others, and withdraw from all but formal church attend- 
ance. But it was quite the other way. ss in his business, 
he kept expanding at Bethany, and he never asked any one 
to assume burdens that he was not ready to share. Because 
in this respect he was unique among Americans of his time, 
Bethany was unique. 

The Bethany activities are so numerous that we cannot 
mention them all.” Many of the most interesting and per- 
manent features of Protestant church and Sunday-school 
work originated at Bethany. Wanamaker was no less pro- 

* John Wanamaker disputed vigorously the truth of this assertion. He 
recognized his son’s solicitude, and appreciated it. The relations between 
the father and son were exceptionally close for two generations associated 
in the same business. But he used to say that “Tom doesn’t understand.” 
The Bethany Sunday, he declared, was his “best way of resting.” 

* How true this is will readily be grasped when we state that in the prep- 


aration of this biography, from the papers of John Wanamaker, we have 
made two thousand cards concerning Bethany Church and its extension work. 


BETHANY 239 


lific in conceiving and successful in launching innovations 
in the church than in the business field. Bethany was the 
first large institutional church in the United States. Mis- 
sion extension work started almost simultaneously with the 
foundation of the church. As early as 1874 there was 
an athletic corps. Bethany Sunday School assumed social 
as well as purely religious activities, and established evan- 
gelistic tents, a rescue mission, a seashore home, a daily 
vacation Bible school, and evening classes on week-day 
nights. There were organizations for home and foreign 
missionary effort. Bethany people visited hospitals and 
prisons. The Sunday school was conceived of and developed 
as an institution for adults fully as much as for children. 
A pastor’s and a superintendent’s class were formed. For 
grown-ups there was a Bible Union in the afternoon and 
for men only the Brotherhood in the morning before the 
regular church service. Of the First Penny Savings Bank 
and Bethany College, which later became the Wanamaker 
Institute, we have spoken elsewhere.’ 

The most remarkable Bethany organization, which has 
endured to the present time and which has remained, unlike 
the Penny Savings Bank and the Wanamaker Institute, a 
phase of the church’s activities, is the Bethany Brotherhood. 
It was organized in September, 1890, as a branch of the 
Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip, founded by a pastor 
in Reading, Pa.” This was while Wanamaker was Post- 
master-General. On the first Sunday he gathered twenty- 
seven men together, and explained to them the purposes of 
the organization. He assured them that he would meet 
faithfulness with faithfulness, despite the fact that he was 
a government official, burdened with many cares. The chal- 
lenge was met, and at the end of the first decade nine 


_ See above, vol. i, pp. 144-5; vol. ii, pp. 221-7, 290-94. 
The Rev. Rufus W. Miller, D.D., who died in 1925. 


338 JOHN WANAMAKER 


hundred men were attending the Sunday-morning service 
and were publishing a monthly paper. 

This encouraged Wanamaker to build upon the site of 
the original Bethany Church on South Street a social club- 
house for Brotherhood men. He equipped the building 
with shuffleboards, billiard and pool tables, a room for 
games, and a reading room with magazines and newspapers, 
on the ground floor; a museum and auditorium on the 
second floor; a dining room and kitchen on the third floor; 
and a roof garden with comfortable chairs for lounging. 
In the basement was a swimming pool. To the west of the 
Brotherhood building he put up a two-story library, with 
stacks for fifty thousand volumes and a large and bright 
reading room for neighborhood use, which he offered to 
the city. It is now the John Wanamaker Branch of the 
Free Library of Philadelphia. It was his idea that Brother- 
hood activities should go on through all the week, and 
that the members of his class should have a real club. He 
instituted a savings fund, and started a building and loan 
association, whose assets were over $250,000 within ten 
years. 

Wanamaker took the deepest interest in the fortunes of 
the members of the Brotherhood, keeping in close touch 
with all who were ill or out of work. He sent them to . 
hospitals at his own expense and helped them to find work 
when they were unemployed. His personal postcards and 
his letters to be read on Sunday mornings, sent from abroad 
and in the last years from Florida, made the men feel that 
he was always near to them." The men of the Friendly 


*In May, 1906, writing from Carlsbad, Wanamaker said: “I am laboring 
to break the back of the self-imposed duty of the men’s postals. I have done 
about 400, and have yet 850 to do. The fitting of the cards to the men 
takes much time and the writing is more difficult this third year. I can 
only do about 15 an hour. They have to be addressed and my message 
written on the face, and I must do it all myself. Dr. Dickey offers to help, 
but that would not do. I must have spent, all told, 100 hours on this work 


BETHANY 339 


Union used to serenade him on Christmas Eve. We find 
this mention in the diary: 

Christmas, 1912, in the old front room where I slept last night to 
hear the first words of the morning Christmas carol of my faithful men 
from the lots. I had more than an hour with them in the basement 
until bright daylight, over their coffee and rolls. 


It is the common history of American cities that neighbor- 
hoods have changed radically and startlingly. Not only 
business, but also a different type of people have encroached 
upon and transformed residential sections formerly inhab- 
ited by a population of purely British and northern Euro- 
pean stocks. The flocking North of negroes and the 
immigration of millions of Italians, Slavs, and Jews from 
eastern Europe gradually ousted the old residents from 
their homes, and as the younger generation grew up it went 
to newer sections. Churches, with splendid buildings and 
equipment, were left without the parishioners who had 
filled them. Bethany was no exception to the rule. The 
problem was already becoming acute when Wanamaker was 
in his prime. Bethany could count upon sentiment and 
loyalty to retain its older membership. But the younger 
people, with their children, could not be expected to 
continue to come long distances to church and Sunday 
school. Wanamaker foresaw that Bethany in the twen- 
tieth century would not be the neighborhood church, 
crowded to the doors, that it had been in the nineteenth 
century. Under his leadership, far-seeing and courageous, 
the church adapted itself to new conditions. Every nerve 
was strained, of course, to keep those who were already on 
its rolls and to bring in new blood at Twenty-second and 
Bainbridge Streets. The unusual character of the church 


of remembrance of the men—say 4 days of 24 hours each if all put 
together.” And on board the Campania, returning home, on July 8 of the 
same year, he said, “I have written 813 more postcards to the Brotherhood 
members, every one different.” 


34.0 JOHN WANAMAKER 


and its services still drew people. But there was a duty 
owing to the new generation to give them the Bethany 
spirit and atmosphere in their own neighborhood. 

On July 9, 1885, Bethany Church established a mission 
in a tent at Gray’s Ferry Road near Carpenter Street. In 
the course of the next decade all the region to the south 
was built up. A new Presbyterian Church was needed in 
the locality, and Wanamaker decided to build a Bethany 
Memorial Chapel at Twenty-eighth and Morris Streets 
as a thank-offering when the Philadelphia store was saved 
from the great Market Street fire of 1897. Ground was 
broken in the spring of 1901. Wanamaker laid the corner 
stone on August 10 of that year. The church was com- 
pleted and dedicated as the John Chambers Memorial Pres- 
byterian Church on October 19, 1902, with a membership 
of several hundred and a regular Sunday-school attendance 
of over a thousand. It was built as an institutional church, 
with an auditorium seating twelve hundred, a Sunday- 
school building, public reading room, kindergarten room, 
gymnasium and shower baths, and dining room and kitchen. 
In writing the announcements for the dedication of the new 
church Wanamaker called it “the New House of the Lord,” 
but later he changed the name to “the Church of the Love 
of God.” 

In 1911 he founded for the men of the neighborhood, 
who he felt ought to have an organization similar to his 
Brotherhood at Bethany, the Men’s Friendly Union, in 
which he was always deeply interested and whose services 
he attended when he could. It was to the members of this 
organization that he gave the annual dinner on Lincoln’s 
birthday. He provided instruments and a teacher for a 
Friendly Union band, and in 1915 he arranged for them 
to have an athletic field at Twenty-eighth and Tasker 
Streets, with baseball diamond, tennis and handball courts, 


BETHANY 341 


quoit grounds, a running track, and a grand stand seating 
fifteen hundred. He wrote the orders of worship for the 
Union, and gave it the motto, “Help the other man.” 

The trend of Bethany population was to West Philadel- 
phia. When he believed that enough Presbyterians were 
settled in the region of Fifty-second Street to justify start- 
ing a movement for a new church, and the need for this 
was proved by a successful series of tent services in the 
summer of 1905, he purchased the entire block on Spruce 
Street, from Fifty-third to Fifty-fourth, for a Bethany 
Temple. The new church was organized on Febru- 
ary 25, 1906, and a building seating one thousand was 
erected in 1910. In 1920, Sunday-school buildings, a 
memorial to World War veterans, were dedicated. Before 
John Wanamaker died Bethany Temple had a membership 
of over sixteen hundred and a Sunday school of fourteen 
hundred. In fifteen years its people had raised nearly a 
quarter of a million dollars. 

The existence of these three churches, all drawing their 
inspiration from the same source, seemed, in Wanamaker’s 
mind, to impose the necessity of a common organization. 
He did not want it ever said that Bethany had fallen off 
in numbers or contributions or influence. The way out was 
to make the three branches of the church one. His col- 
leagues at Bethany agreed with him, and Presbytery con- 
sented to the formation of “The Bethany Collegiate Presby- 
terian Church of Philadelphia.” When it was realized that 
the Bethany Temple was firmly grounded, the Bethany 
charter was changed by the courts, and the new organization 
was incorporated in June, 1908. In the original corpora- 
tion there were three pastors and sixty elders; and “all 
titles to all properties, including endowments, except as 
otherwise directed by the donors,” were “vested in the 
Trustees of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 


342 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Church in the United States of America.” This reincor- 
poration, which included the John Chambers Memorial 
Church of the Love of God and Bethany Church, with all’ 
the activities of the three churches, was the realization of 
John Wanamaker’s plan for the perpetuity and co-ordina- 
tion of the work to which he had given so freely through- 
out his life. Vesting the property in the trustees of the 
General Assembly, he regarded as “the plan most likely to 
give security and to assure the interest of the whole church.” 
But although the plan was approved by the church and the 
provision was inserted in the new charter, and although an 
eminent lawyer, John G. Johnson, gave Wanamaker the 
opinion that it could be legally done, the Supreme Court 
of Pennsylvania refused to allow putting the properties in 
trust and ruled that they “must be held subject to the con- 
trol and disposition of the lay members of the churches.” 
The collegiate form of church government, however, was 
carried out. As long as Wanamaker lived, the three 
churches remained one corporation, and were counted as 
one church. Wanamaker had ambitious projects for extend- 
ing this system. He believed that Bethany could “keep the 
old downtown churches, underwriting them financially, and 
save what there is in them, putting something else against 
it.” We have the stenographic notes of a conference with 
leading Presbyterian clergymen in 1909 on this subject. 
Some agreed with him; others disagreed. There is no doubt 
that some downtown churches could have been saved and 
could have been converted into “life-saving stations for the 
newcomers,” had Wanamaker’s opinion prevailed. But 
there were few who were willing to pay, as he always was, 
the price of personal service and overcoming opposition far 
from where men would see and cheer. Most people saw 
Wanamaker in the glory of his success, and either envied 
him or said.that with his money it was natural that he could 


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344. JOHN WANAMAKER 


do things that others could not. They did not realize the 
truth of Browning’s lines, that “the deeds of a man for 
which we vest him, were done in the dank and the cold.” 

In his last days Wanamaker’s letters to Bethany from 
Florida were as remarkable and enthusiastic as those of 
the middle period of his life. He carried out to the end 
the belief he so often expressed, that “it is easy for a man 
who has money to make out a check, but what people want 
really is sympathy more than checks.” Ina long telegram 
to his secretary from St. Petersburg, on February 9, 1919, 
containing a message “‘To the dear pastors, teachers, and 
scholars at Bethany,” he demonstrated that he had in mind 
the exact figures and details of Bethany history through 
more than sixty years. One of his last letters from Florida, 
on January 26, 1922, contained this sentence, “But, dear 
man, no one can go away from Bethany without being lone- 
some.” 

Far from regretting how he had spent his Sundays since 
he was a boy in his‘teens, he left this testimony: 


I have been credited with doing much for the Sabbath School; but, 
when I look back over my life, I feel that I have never done half the 
good for the Sabbath School that it has done for me. 


CHAPTER XXV 
THE CHURCH STATESMAN 


FTER spending four years as Postmaster-General in 
Harrison’s Cabinet, Wanamaker could no longer be 
bound by Philadelphia as the sphere of his activities. He 
loved the city in which he had spent half a century, and 
remained to the end of his life faithful to his Philadelphia 
business and to Bethany. He continued to give the old 
store and the old Sunday school the first place in heart and 
mind, and his interest in the politics and welfare of his 
native city was unabated. But he entered into the great 
world outside of Philadelphia in a way he had never done 
before. We have told of his fight for the Governorship of 
Pennsylvania and for a seat in the United States Senate; 
of the founding and development of a store in New York; 
of the idea he cherished for seven years of extending his 
business to Paris and London; and of the frequent trips 
abroad, the forming of friendships with Englishmen, the 
sojourns at continental watering places, and travel in the 
Near East and India. 

His religious interests widened in the same way as his 
political and business interests. It was a logical step from 
Presbyterian activities in Philadelphia to foreign missions; 
from Bethany Sunday School to world-wide Sunday-school 
work; from the Philadelphia Y. M. C. A. to the Interna- 
tional Y. M. C. A. Long before he became Postmaster- 
General, Wanamaker was known throughout the United 
States as a Philadelphia merchant and Sunday-school super- 
intendent. The Centennial Exhibition had laid the foun- 

345 


346 JOHN WANAMAKER 


dation for a nation-wide reputation for achievement in a 
local field. He was known in Y. M. C. A. circles as the 
first regular secretary, and later patron saint of the Phila- 
delphia branch. But in the last thirty years of his life he 
became a national and international figure in the religious 
world, and earned by his work and his talents the right to 
be called a church statesman. 

We did not attempt to mention all the Wanamaker inno- 
vations in business when we were writing of him as a mer- 
cantile pioneer; and here we shall not list the religious and 
philanthropic organizations to which he belonged, in which 
he took some part, and of which he was benefactor. Inter- 
ested in every good work, Wanamaker never turned a deaf 
ear to the man who came to him and asked his indorsement 
for any project which he felt would advance the coming 
of the Kingdom of God. Essentially a religious man, put- 
ting religious interests ahead of everything else, he believed 
that he ought not to refuse to give his name to a host of 
committees and organizations. Many of them wanted only 
his name—or a contribution! They were sometimes sur- 
prised to find that the busiest man in Philadelphia had 
accepted a committee membership seriously. A worthless 
or ineffective enterprise never kept his name long on its 
list; for he would go to meetings and want to know what 
was being done. 

In his own Presbytery of Philadelphia he represented the 
session of Bethany Church from 1863 until his death, and 
was one of the most active laymen in that body. He knew 
the ministers and was glad to be with them, because he was 
thoroughly at home in their company. When serious ques~ 
tions arose he did not hesitate to give his opinion and urge 
the course that seemed wise to him. He was opposed to 
timidity in church extension, and also to abandoning down- 


THE CHURCH STATESMAN 347 


town churches.” The idea of a collegiate church, which he 
put through for Bethany, was unprecedented. In the last 
year of his life, on May 1, 1922, he was elected vice-mod- 
erator of Presbytery, a proof of his fidelity in old age, and 
his last public function was presiding over a meeting in that 
capacity. He was probably the only Presbyterian business 
man who ever founded four churches in his own city.” 

His first commissionership to the General Assembly was 
in 1880, when he went to Madison, Wisconsin. In 1888, 
when the Assembly met in Philadelphia, Wanamaker made 
a stirring address, reviewing the history of Presbyterianism 
in the United States, and launching an appeal for $1,000,- 
ooo for the relief of aged and disabled ministers. He 
called raising this fund “the war cry of the High Court of 
our Church,” and in his peroration he brought the members 
of the Assembly to their knees by his unexpected ending: 

“This church has been for one hundred years in the lead 
in the national, state, municipal, and social life of our coun- 
try. Blessed men were they, our forefathers, who built so 
broadly and solidly under the Head of the Church. Clos- 
ing up the old century let us kneel together in thanksgiving 
to God. Not unto us! Not unto us be the glory!” ® 

His personal attention to church matters and his faithful 


* Where property had become very valuable, and there was only business 
in the neighborhood, he saw the wisdom of letting old sites go and of 
churches moving. But he protested in Presbytery and before committees 
against the Presbyterian Church’s policy of giving up in localities where the 
population had changed. “It is nothing less than hauling down the flag,” 
he once said. ‘The coming of these people is the church’s opportunity and 
duty. They need our churches even more than they need our schools.” 

* Grace Church was the fourth, which was founded by “pilgrims from 
Bethany” in 1871. On December 21, 1921, Dr. Robert A. Hunter invited 
Mr. Wanamaker to speak at the fiftieth anniversary of Grace Church, as 
he had done at the first anniversary. Dr. Hunter, who was stated clerk of 
Presbytery, wrote: “You have spread your wonderful interest everywhere, 
not only by starting Grace, Bethany, Bethany Temple, and John Chambers 
Memorial, but many other organizations.” 

“In a political campaign speech in Pennsylvania in 1898 he spoke of his 
church as “the old Presbyterian Church, whose history is the record of the 
martyrs for the truth and of lives laid down on the battlefields.” 


348 JOHN WANAMAKER 


membership on committees led to his election as vice-mod- 
erator of the General Assembly (the highest office a lay- 
man has held in the Presbyterian Church) at Eagle Lake, 
Indiana, in 1897. There he presided at many of the ses- 
sions. His popularity was instantly established, and he 
made a lasting impression as a presiding officer. One of 
his fellow-commissioners wrote: 


He ruled the Assembly, which was filled with famous parliamentarians, 
with firmness yet with a pleasantry that put all present in a good humor. 
I don’t believe he could be idle if he tried. When he escaped from the 
Moderator’s chair, he was immediately off to Chicago to address half a 
dozen congregations in as many different churches and halls; or he sped 
away in a carriage to visit his former Indiana home and talked to two 
or three gatherings of old neighbors, or he hurried to Warsaw and near-by 
towns to tell them about the present needs of Christianity in our country. 


He was one of the hosts of the General Assembly when 
it met again in Philadelphia in 1901; and at the 114th 
Assembly in New York in 1902, just after his return from 
India, he presided over the mass meeting for foreign mis- 
sions in Carnegie Hall, and made a notable address on a 
program that included Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roose- 
velt, Henry van Dyke, and President Patton of Princeton. 

Presbyterian Church affairs recur often in Wanamaker’s 
diary, and in several committees of the General Assembly 
his membership and interest continued decade after decade. 
On November 14, 1912, he wrote, just as he would have 
done twenty-five years before: “I have been busy to-day 
with a General Assembly committee”; and on May 26, 
1916, he records: “All this week and part of last I had 
to be at General Assembly at Atlantic City. There are 
881 Ministers and Elders.” Numerous letters and docu- 
ments in the files indicate that after the World War he was 
of the opinion that the “New Era movement” in the church 
was what was needed. The octogenarian, like the boy in 


THE CHURCH STATESMAN 349 


his teens, stressed the supreme importance of evangelistic 
work. 

It was because of his faith in the simple Gospel message 
that John Wanamaker took a leading part in bringing Billy 
Sunday to Philadelphia in 1915. He gave Sunday the same 
loyal and wholehearted support that he had given Moody 
forty years earlier. Wanamaker defended Sunday against 
his critics, who were legion, and declared that the power of 
God was in the evangelist’s preaching, and that if people 
objected to Billy’s dogmatic utterances, they were quarrel- 
ing with Christ’s teaching, for Billy simply repeated what 
Christ had taught. “Billy,” he said, “takes his doctrine 
from the Bible and not from advanced schools of theology. 
Let those who deny the divine personality of Jesus make 
the most of it. If they can get into Heaven past these say- 
ings of Christ, let them do so; it is not Billy Sunday’s fault 
if he sticks to his text.” Wanamaker believed that the 
evangelist’s compensation was justified, and pointed to the 
great results. 

Other Presbyterian activities frequently mentioned are 
the Social Union, the Sunday School Superintendents’ Asso- 
ciation, the Presbyterian Hospital, and the Presbyterian 
Orphanage. The latter two organizations at different times 
demanded his attention and money, and the buildings were 
in part erected under his supervision. His wife provided 
the funds for the children’s ward building of the Presby- 
terian Hospital.* The Presbyterian Orphanage was one of 

* A story comes to light in the private papers that is well worth telling. 
Mrs. Wanamaker’s large gift to the Presbyterian Hospital came from a 
legacy from her father. Wanamaker had been counting on using the money 
temporarily for some other purpose, and thought it had been so understood. 
But when his wife told him what she had done, and added that she wanted 
him to take charge of seeing that the children’s ward was built, he said 
nothing. And when at the same time she asked him for a contribution for 
the Presbyterian Orphanage, suggesting the amount she wanted him to give, 


he wrote her out a check. Years afterward Wanamaker said that at that 
particular moment he had needed the money, which his wife did not know; 


350 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Mrs. Wanamaker’s great interests, and she enlisted her hus- 
band in it. One of its buildings is the Mother House, in 
memory of his mother. Bethany played an important part 
in the foundation and early maintenance of the Orphanage. 

In the wider work of the church, his interest was lifelong 
in the Salvation Army and the Christian Endeavor Move- 
ment. He knew General Booth in London, and was always 
kind and generous to members of his family, the differences 
among whom he deplored and did his best to minimize. 
He admired Commander Evangeline Booth’s success as an 
organizer and her spirit and gifts as a speaker. The work 
of the Salvation Army, as we have said in writing of the 
Friendly Inn, was what he believed that the world needed; * 
and, as was the case with the Y. M. C. A., he thought that 
an effort of this kind, with its own particular field, in no 
way impaired the prestige and efficiency, or invaded the 
domain, of organized church activities. His interest in the 
Christian Endeavor Movement was partly due to his wife’s 
liking for Dr. Francis E. Clark and her belief in his mis- 
sion. He attended International Christian Endeavor con- 
ventions at home and abroad,” and was a trustee of the 
World’s C. E. Union up to the end of his life. He took 
great interest in the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip, of 
which his own brotherhoods at Bethany and John Chambers 
became chapters. In 1915 he became vice-president of the 
International Council of the Brotherhood of Andrew and 
Philip. 
but he did not tell her, because he did not want “to see the beautiful smile 
of giving leave her face.” 

* The private files show that he expressed this belief in practical aid and 
counsel, of inestimable value to the Booths in the spread of their work in 
America. After his death a special issue of the War Cry called him 
one of the best friends the Salvation Army ever had. There are refer- 
ences to the appreciation the Army showed him in his diary. For instance: 
“March 24, 1911—at my desk in N. Y. The Salvation Army band is 
under my window, pausing on the way to a meeting to play a good night 


to me.” 
2 ee 
See above, vol. ii, p. 55. 


THE CHURCH STATESMAN 351 


We have told elsewhere of John Wanamaker’s pioneering 
in Y. M. C. A. and Sunday-school work and of the perma- 
nent influence he had upon the development of these two 
movements. After 1893 he gave more time to their national 
and international phases. 

Strictly speaking, there was no time in his life that Wana- 
maker was not interested in the world aspect of the Y. M. 
C. A. work. He had dreamed as a lad of going to Paris 
for the first universal conference in 1855,' and he had 
helped in forming the International Committee in 1860, 
of which he was elected chairman at the New Orleans con- 
vention in the same year. Sir George Williams was the 
friend with whom he spent most of his time in London, and 
Wanamaker made a special point of attending the annual 
meetings of the British Y. M. C. A. whenever he could. 
But his entry into the world-wide Association work began 
in June, 1894, when he made a speech at the fiftieth anniver- 
sary at Windsor Castle, where the delegates were received 
by Queen Victoria. That same year he made possible the 
solid foundation of the work in Zurich, Switzerland. In 
1899 Wanamaker was again offered the chairmanship of the 
International Committee, and wrote on June 7: 


I am just recovered enough to be about my room. I thank you indeed 
for your brotherly greeting and offer of the chairmanship of the Interna- 
tional Association. But I am loath to take it up until I am convinced 
that there is no way to retain the worthy veteran leader, Mr. Jacobs, 
He is in the city now and I am conferring with him on the subject. 


Wanamaker’s first gift of a Y. M. C. A. building abroad 
was that of Madras in 1895. He followed it by the build- 
ing for boys in Calcutta in 1901, which Dr. John R. Mott 
says is “considered one of the most fruitful pieces of Asso- 


*In 1905—half a century later—the dream was fulfilled when he attended 
the semicentennial celebration in Paris. 


352 JOHN WANAMAKER 


ciation work in Asia.” He gave buildings to Seoul and 


Kyoto in 1909 and to Peking in 1913. But while he was 
contributing to buildings abroad and urging others to con- 
sider the claims of the Association in Asia, his greatest 
contribution to the Association was the example and impe- 
tus he gave to the extension of the work in American cities 
through adequate buildings and the opening of branches 
wherever needed. He never tired pointing out that this 
work was the business of the whole community, and his 
help and encouragement in “drives” were worth far more 
than money. One of his last messages to the Y. M. C. A. 
was in an address at the dedication of a new Philadelphia 
branch building in 1920, when he said: 

“J have no regrets for having become one of the first 
members of the Y. M. C. A. in America and of the first 
that got on its feet—the Philadelphia Association. .. . 
This building will be fine and home-like, where young men 
will feel that a human heart is beating, touching life with a 
human note. This house rising in the eyes of all the people 
will be a daily speech to the city and state that it stands 
here as the House of the Love of God—God’s people are 
its builders, and their thoughts, their gifts, and their prayers 
will be wrought into swords to cut down evil, and to lay 
true foundations of permanent prosperity for all time to 
come. The purpose of this non-sectarian, undenominational 
association is to supplement, to strengthen the work of the 
Church of God. On its roomy platform we may all stand 
together for this common purpose—the uplifting of every 
man’s condition.” 

In 1895 Wanamaker was elected president of the Penn- 
sylvania State Sabbath School Association and served for 
twelve years. In 1907, at the Uniontown Convention, he 


* See above, vol. ii, pp. 65-6. 


THEACEHURCH STATESMAN 353 


insisted that H. J. Heinz take the presidency. But he 
became chairman of the Board, and continued to attend 
conventions in different parts of the state whenever it was 
possible for him to do so. Some of his speeches at these 
gatherings of Sunday-school teachers are the most remark- 
able he ever delivered. He prepared them with great care, 
and generally had them printed beforehand. Then he 
would revise them. Into them he poured the cream of his 
thinking for the year. He emphasized public education, 
faithfulness in fulfilling the duties of citizenship, and zeal 
for social service, as factors in bringing about better living 
conditions in America and in winning the world to Christ. 
But he never failed to subordinate all these things to Bible 
reading and study and to simple evangelical preaching. 

None who reads his address at the Reading convention 
of 1899 will contest Wanamaker’s right to be called a church 
statesman. In some respects it was the most notable address 
of his long career as a public speaker. He reviewed in lucid 
and graphic language the religious development of the nine- 
teenth century, taking up the wider use of the Bible and its 
translation into all languages; the extension of missions, the 
Sunday school, and the Young Men’s Christian Association 
into all parts of the earth, and the remarkable success that 
was attending the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temper- 
ance Union, which he prophesied would end in eradicating 
the drink evil. He compared these developments with 
inventions in the secular field, and with the spread of edu- 
cation, through university extension, kindergartens, manual 
training, and industrial schools. His last address was given 
at the Altoona convention in 1921 on the day which he said 
“marks sixty-three years, eight months, and one day of my 
superintendency of Bethany Sunday School.” 

In Sunday-school work, as in Y. M. C. A. work, his inter- 


354 JOHN WANAMAKER 


est grew from Philadelphia and Pennsylvania to the whole 
world. In 1904 he was elected a vice-president of the 
World’s Sunday School Association, and enjoyed attending 
several of the triennial conventions. Upon the sudden 
death of H. J. Heinz in May, 1919, when the annual meet- 
ing of the Executive Committee was in session, Wanamaker 
was chosen to take his place. It was his privilege to issue 
the call for the World’s Executive Committee to meet at 
the Imperial Hotel, at Tokyo, on October 4, 1920. Wana- 
maker intended to be present at the Tokyo convention, and 
made his plans. It had been the dream of his life to visit 
the Far East; but in August, when it was realized that his 
wife’s long illness might prove fatal, he renounced the trip. 
The death of Mrs. Wanamaker did not make him recon- 
sider the decision. The blow had been too great for him 
and he was too old, though he would not admit it, for a 
voyage halfway round the world to be beneficial. To the 
organizing secretary in Tokyo, he wrote: 


I had to give up the expectation of going to Japan by reason of the 
illness and now the death of Mrs. Wanamaker. I cannot express to you 
the great disappointment it is to me, as I had hoped that Mrs. Wana- 
maker would be spared and that I might make the visit to your great 
country and its splendid men. I had a very great vision about Japan 
and it was on my heart in a strong way that I might have a blessing in 
going thither, but it is ordered otherwise and I have to submit. 


Despite his absence, when the Sunday-school representa- 
tives of the nations gathered in Japan, Wanamaker’s name 
was the only one they considered for president. He was 
elected by men and women of thirty nations to lead the 
world in the Sunday-school movement. When he received 
the cablegram, he turned to a friend and said: 

“Queer how things happen in the world. The one to whom 
this news would have meant everything is gone. She was 





A SIncuLaR CoINcIDENCE—Founp WHEN UNBALIYG ON JULY 20TH, 192I, AN 
Invoice oF Wicker EFrects, SHIPPED TO THE STORE FROM JAPAN. PART 
OF ORIGINAL CaRTON, WRAPPED IN THE Japan Advertiser OF YOKOHAMA 





THE CHURCH STATESMAN 355 


with me sixty-two years ago when I made my first beginning 
as a Sunday-school superintendent. Could the lad on 
South Street have dreamed that one day the Sunday schools 
of the world, meeting in far-off Japan, would call on him 
to lead them?” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


AN INTERPRETER 


N April, 1912, to the Fifth International Congress of 
Chambers of Commerce, Wanamaker said: 

“T hail the coming of the day when we shall have but 
one postage stamp the world over, but one system of 
measurement, but one coin, and but one language. It seems 
a great hope, and yet the truth is that we all have the same 
purpose—to elevate our countries—and a great readiness to 
understand one another and to be friends. The world is 
growing warmer-hearted and we are getting closer together. 
Let us stand against war; let us stand for peace; let us be 
careful not to misinterpret one another. We must believe 
in one another, and work together for the good, not of 
some little corner, but of the whole earth, from the rising 
of the sun to its going down.” 

These words, foreshadowing the movement for interna- 
tional co-operation that swept the world only a few years 
later, are an accurate interpretation of the spirit of the era 
that immediately preceded the World War. Men were 
longing for peace, for better international understanding, 
and for world-wide co-operation to further the common 
good of all nations. It is but one of a hundred quotations 
we could adduce to show how representative Wanamaker 
was of the thought of his time in its prophetic aspect. The 
rare combination of thinker and seer made him in his last 
days an interpreter. 

A merchant is commonly supposed to be too engrossed 
in his business to moralize about the world in which he 

356 


AN INTERPRETER 357 


lives, and to speculate upon the ways and tendencies of 
humankind. It is taken for granted that merchants—that 
all business men, in fact—must necessarily be Marthas, so 
devoted to material things that they do not appraise spiritual 
values. 

It was never that way with Wanamaker. We have seen 
how in his youth he did not live by bread alone. His Beth- 
any Sundays were spent in expounding the Bible as the way 
of life. His main effort in business for many years was 
to convince the public that his store had been founded and 
was being run to serve the people. When he became a gen- 
eral storekeeper, his idea was to make Wanamaker’s a social 
need and influence. What he accomplished. was possible 
because he was able to bring to people’s attention and make 
them want what he thought they ought to have. He was 
a mass psychologist; but he became so by studying people as 
individuals before he took them as groups. His stores were 
his laboratories; and Bethany was a laboratory, too. Later, 
in public life, he came to know men, their tendencies, their 
activities, their defects, in ways that added to what he 
learned about them through his wonderful opportunities 
as a merchant and a Sunday-school superintendent. Travel, 
too, played its great part. The boy who stood behind the 
counter in a Market Street store was transformed in sixty 
years to the citizen of the world, with a trenchant pen and 
an unusual gift as a public speaker, better qualified than 
most men of his day to be what he became—an interpreter. 

The presidential campaign of 1912 ended disastrously 
for the Republican party. All that Wanamaker had striven 
for seemed to have been lost, but something was again 
aroused in the man that he had resolutely put aside in 
earlier years, after the Postmaster-Generalship and the 
Pennsylvania political campaigns, in order to concentrate 
his attention upon his business and his church. At the age 


358 JOHN WANAMAKER 


of seventy-five he felt that he could no longer resist the 
impulse of writing down and giving to the world the 
thoughts that came into his mind. He had to become, in 
tangible and permanent form, an interpreter. 

Up to 1912, aside from Bethany, Wanamaker wrote and 
spoke spasmodically. The only consecutive speaking he had 
ever done was in the Pennsylvania political campaigns, when 
he went on day after day for months, hammering on the 
same theme and never repeating himself. He had pub- 
lished no book. His name appeared only under state- 
ments about the stores and their policies and under mes- 
sages to his Sunday school and other religious organiza- 
tions. What life meant to him, and how he applied his 
own experience to meeting and solving problems, were put 
down only in reports of talks to his store family or appeared 
in brilliant flashes in Commencement speeches to young 
people at Williamson and elsewhere. 

When he returned from the Republican Convention in 
1912, and went home to rest, there was a hot spell. He 
could not “potter around” Lindenhurst—the expression is 
his own. He spent so much time reading that his son Rod- 
man, to get him away from books, suggested that he write 
some advertising. 

“T have not written advertising for so many years that 
I forget,” he protested. “TI have only used the blue pencil 
on it. I wouldn’t know how or what to write.” 

Continuing his own account of what happened, Wana- 
maker said: 


Rodman seemed so disappointed that after he left the room, I cut open 
an envelope and began to write on the inside. It was not long enough, 
although an envelope ought to be long enough for what a man has to say. 
I used three envelopes and gave the result to my son. The next morning 
I was surprised to see what I had written in a box in the corner of the 
store advertisement. 


AN INTERPRETER 359 


It is ten years since I wrote that first fatal editorial, and in that time 
I have certainly written 1,000 or more pieces that I tore up as ‘not worth 
printing. When I got to writing these brief things I realized that the 
idea wasn’t enough—it had to be pursued. Because it is my nature to 
keep after things that elude me, I guess, writing these editorials has 
always been great fun. Up to 1912 all I had ever written in my life 
were the four reports I had to get out annually when I was Postmaster- 
General. 


We have quoted from an interview given by Wanamaker 
in the last year of his life. Three years earlier, in 1919, 
one of the store editorials said: 


In 1912, seven years ago, we wrote on the back of an envelope, at 
the request of the writer’s son, the first of these daily editorials. Let- 
ters of responsiveness and thankfulness that have come back from the 
people have been like the old farmer’s little candle lit in a public assembly 
in New England when they were debating about proclaiming a fast and 
he proposed a thanksgiving day. “That man who will learn of none but 
himself is sure to have a fool for his master.” This was said by B. F. 
Our clumsy fingers have tried to send out messages. ‘Thanks for the 
messages that have come back from our fellow-countrymen all over the 
United States. 


The reception with which the store editorials met lit- 
erally gave Wanamaker a new lease on life. He was 
encouraged to keep writing them. A new one had to be 
done each day. But each day was bound to bring a word 
of appreciation from some source. Wanamaker had been 
accustomed to receiving letters from people, thanking him 
for some stand he took or criticizing him for some stand 
he did not take. But the responses to the store editorials 
were unique in his experience. He touched heartstrings, 
and they responded. He made hosts of friends. He had 
found a pulpit unlike any that had ever been known before. 
The original intention had been to make the editorials call 
attention to the Wanamaker business. They were to be 


*New York Times, February 7, 1922, reprinted in Current Opinion, 
March, 1922. 


360 JOHN WANAMAKER 


advertisements. But very soon Wanamaker found himself 
looked upon as a friend and philosopher, sharing the fruits 
of his experience with others; as a patriot, sounding the 
clarion call to duty; as an optimist, radiating a cheery good 
morning; and, above all, as an interpreter, commenting on 
human behavior and outlining currents of public opinion 
and tendencies of group action. 

Wanamaker wrote more than five thousand editorials, 
never once, as far as we have been able to discover, repeating 
himself. Nearly four thousand of them were used in the 
daily advertisements of the Wanamaker stores." He did 
not dictate these “pieces,” as he called them. They were 
rarely written in business hours. Putting the daily edi- 
torial together was a recreation to enjoy after the day’s 
work in his office, when he stayed late (which was fre- 
quently) or at home. Writing the editorials was often 
hardly more than assembling phrases and sentences that 
came to him in the course of the day, and which he had 
jotted down during business or social conversations, on the 
train or street, in his automobile, even in church. He had 
the habit of carrying papers and pamphlets, notebooks 
and unanswered letters, in all his pockets. Even his over- 
coat pockets bulged with them. On these the notes were 
recorded, and then he would piece them together, using 
a lead pencil when his fountain pen refused to work. ‘The 
method was not new—we have found traces of it when he 
was still in his twenties. He was no respecter of places or 
persons when he got an idea. Wherever he was, whatever 


* Since John Wanamaker’s death, in the little box at the upper left-hand 
corner of the daily advertisement, the stores have continued to carry the 
editorials, under the caption, “From the writings of the Founder.” Those 
that are republished do not contain, of course, the apt allusions to events of 
the day that often made a Wanamaker editorial peculiarly attention-arresting. 
But even with the elimination of the editorials that were written for the day, 
enough of permanent interest remains to last through years without repetition. 


AN INTERPRETER 361 


he was doing, down it went on an odd bit of paper. His 
diaries were written almost wholly in this way. 

The process was not conducive to unity of thought. Study 
of Wanamaker’s speeches and writings—also of the drafts 
of advertisements (in the form of announcements) that he 
occasionally made—indicate at times a discursiveness that 
impairs their effectiveness. Wanamaker knew this. He 
was able to read himself as keenly and as mercilessly as 
he read others. He had the gift—rare among men who 
attain high position—of occasionally laughing at himself. 
Once after listening to the J. W. C. I. cadets singing a 
popular song he went back to his office chuckling, and said 
to a friend: “Rambling, rambling, rambling all around, 
rambling up and down—why, that’s me when I get started!” 

In his speeches, however, it was only when one saw them 
in print afterward that the discursive quality was noticed. 
His magnetic personality, his bonhomie, his felicity of 
expression, and his epigrams cast a spell over his listeners. 
When he had set for himself a definite topic or a time limit 
—as was always the case at Bethany—there was no “ram- 
bling.” He knew how to be clear, terse, forceful. The 
editorials of the last decade of his life gained immeasurably 
from the fact that they had to be short. At the age of 
seventy-five he learned a new technique, and became master 
of it. This severe daily discipline that he set for himself 
influenced his other writing and speaking. His Christmas 
cards, his messages to Bethany and the store family, his 
occasional speeches, his letters to friends, of the period from 
1912 to 1922, possess literary merit of an unusual degree. 
No longer did one have to dig for the nuggets of pure 
gold in what Wanamaker said and wrote.* 

The observations, the thoughts, the opinions, the inter- 


* Two volumes of prayers—none over a page long—have been published. 
Their clarity and simple beauty demonstrate the power of expression attained 
by Wanamaker in the latter years of his life. — 


LINDENHURST 


the Sibel Ye — me 
ps eran 
— Fy: 
wfith, helfed, us % beay 
Ip wullerafte SOV Oy 
of ou Hearhy 

dey hue 


3 


| diag 


AN INTERPRETER 363 


pretations of a man who had lived so long and so fully 
would be worth while, however expressed. But for convey- 
ing a message to others, form is as important as content. 
The success of Wanamaker as an interpreter rests more on 
the way he learned to put his thoughts in the store editorials 
than upon the long and rich background of experience that 
inspired them.* 

He acquired the habit of brevity.” But there was no 
limitation in the range of the topics on which he com- 
mented. Like Terence, he could say, Nzhil humani alie- 
num mihi puto. He regarded nothing human as foreign 
to him. But he went farther. A sunrise or sunset, a phe- 
nomenon of nature, a physical law, the habits of birds and 
beasts, gave him a text as fruitful and significant as a trait 
of human nature and anything that human beings did. 
He was the interpreter of the world in which he lived; and 
in his comments on current events, on political happenings, 
and on business in general and his own business in particu- 
lar, he delved deeply and deftly into the fundamentals of 
natural laws and human motives to drive home his point. 
For instance: 


LAST MONDAY’S TERRIBLE, BEWILDERING FOG 
IS SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT 


The city of London is used to such fogs, but they have not been 
-.common to Philadelphia. The hundreds of stalled auto cars; the crip- 
pled machines; the loss of time; the sadness of the accidents, of which 
there were hundreds (according to the newspapers) in and around Phila- 


* Wanamaker never got to the place where he would not be corrected or 
make use of the information of others. Accuracy in what he wrote in the 
store editorials was as important to him as in his advertisements. To give 
one example, in his April 6, 1920, editorial he misquoted an old saw. 
A correspondent called his attention to it. He called for the editorial, 
corrected it with his own hand on the file, so that it would be right if ever 
used again. 

* Could a truth be more concisely expressed than this: “Whatever the bless- 
ings of the war, a train of evils is let loose in a new order of suddenly- 
enriched men”? 


J thu 3 hea Be %Oind 
ty VOU, ny fd 


AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CHRISTMAS GREETINGS 


AN INTERPRETER 365 


delphia, are a signal to us that our parks and streets must be made safer, 
to say nothing of the running of the steam trains in every direction 
into the city, on which so many are dependent to be on time for their 
day’s work. 

There are other fogs, however, to be thought of also, some of them 
infinitely worse, inasmuch as they affect statesmanship in Washington, 
at Harrisburg and in the Councils of Philadelphia, where there is no 
lack of mentality, but the prejudices of party and of politics and personal 
interests that move to action, that make the burdens heavier where taxa- 
tion has to raise the money. 

There are still some fogs in storekeeping, which we are trying to 
clear up. 

We are blessed with great days in the safety, cleanliness, and health- 
fulness of the big building where so many thousands of people come 
daily to enjoy the sights, and see each other and have the opportunities 
that the new displays of goods attract them to every day. 


And: 


AT GENEVA, IN SIGHT OF MONT 
BLANC, FORTY MILES DISTANT 


we have often stood and watched the two rivers, the Arve and the Rhone, 
uniting in one stream and for a long distance each preserving its distinct 
color, one of gray and the other of blue, until far off they become so 
blended that each is lost in the other or the green ocean. 

So is it in human character. Each individual will keep his or her 
distinctiveness until muddy books and muddy companions and careless 
habits destroy the beautiful gifts of life with which they sparkled when 

they started out. 


Sometimes an anecdote, without comment, would tell the 
whole story: 


WHERE DOES THE “KNOW HOW” COME FROM: 


A traveling Englishman, stopping on the village green, gathered a 
crowd about him to see his simple juggling tricks and his trained dog. 
When he finished, a well-dressed man who looked like the parson, 
expressed astonishment that the dog could do so many things. He told 
the entertainer that he had labored with his dog for years to teach him 
to do tricks, but had never succeeded, and he begged to be told how it 


366 JOHN WANAMAKER 


could be done. ‘The modest little man, with his box and clever dog, 
looked at the questioner querulously, and said, ‘Well, to teach a dog 
anything, you yourself must know more than the dog.” 


And shortly before his death he wrote this editorial: 


SOME DAY NOT SO FAR DISTANT 
MY LITTLE PENCIL 


will have written its last piece and be laid aside. I have read and 
searched and listened to wise men and made the best use I could in the 
little scraps I have written of everything that I thought might be useful 
to others, struggling like myself to make the best of life. ‘The only 
wish I have is that I could have done all my work better. 


These illustrations have been picked at random. It is 
not necessary to quote more. The last decade of Wana- 
maker’s life was one of tremendous upheavals and read- 
justments in the political and business world and in the 
social life of the American people. His work as interpreter 
was not confined to the daily editorial for the store adver- 
tisement. He was constantly in demand at public func- 
tions, and he was besieged by requests for messages and 
interviews and letters about everything under the sun. 
“Will you not write for us an editorial like those that appear 
in the Wanamaker ad.?” was a frequent request through 
years. 

It was significant that Wanamaker was the only merchant 
—and one of three business men—among the electors of 
the Hall of Fame, most of whom were educators, writers, 
and statesmen. To the choice of eminent Americans for 
the unique building of New York University he gave 
thoughtful attention; the files bear evidence of his study 
of candidates and the arguments of their proposers. We 
are sure that no elector was more conscientious or enlight- 
ened in casting his vote. 

Wanamaker refused no invitation to speak when it was 
possible for him to go; and he managed somehow to answer 


AN INTERPRETER 367 


all his correspondents. To give others the benefit of his 
experience was a joy; and the appreciation and enthusiasm 
that greeted what he had to say at banquets and on public 
occasions was, as he put it, “my mandate to override the 
doctors’ veto.” He kept radiating the ripe wisdom of his 
years because he felt that he ought to speak and write and 
because it was “great fun.” 

It is manifest that the role of interpreter was a delight- 
ful one; and that it kept Wanamaker full of life and spirits. 
The store editorials and the talks that he gave in connec- 
tion with his business and with the various religious and 
educational offices that he held contain not only Wana- 
maker’s philosophy of life and his attitude toward history 
in the making, but also his ideas of business and his remi- 


niscences of early days. In a very real sense they are his 
autobiography. 


CHAPTER XXVII 
THEPPIRST YEARS) ORO THE EUROPEAN®WAR 


MERICANS of John Wanamaker’s generation, who 
had gone through the Civil War in their youth and 
had come to know Europe at the very beginning of united 
Germany and united Italy, had almost all either died or 
retired from active life when Europe went to war in 1914. 
Wanamaker was an exception. He was still vigorous, still 
in the public eye, and still able to do his full share in 
co-operating with war agencies and in helping to mold pub- 
lic opinion by writings and speeches. No elder American 
had a better background than he for observing, through 
all the period of united Germany, the working out of Ger- 
man political ideals and social customs. His frequent stays 
at Carlsbad and Prussian watering-places had made him 
realize that there was something radically wrong with the 
Austrian and German dynastic system. It puzzled him 
that they had lasted so long in countries where the educa- 
tion of the masses was a fetish. As early as 1898, in a 
political speech, he had said: 


“Emperors and despots read their doom in the advancement of intelli- 
gence the world over. No man was born to be a slave. ‘The dynasties 
of Europe, that have endured for centuries, totter on their foundations, 
and the time is not distant when titled aristocracy will cease to usurp 
the rights of honest people.” 


But when the time did come for the fulfillment of the 
prophecy, the prophet was bewildered. In common with 
virtually all Americans of his class and temperament, he 
could not bring himself to face the reality of war, which 

368 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 369 


he abhorred, in Europe, which he loved. He searched his 
mind for reasons for Germany’s actions. ‘They were not 
hard to find, old memories crowding on him and helping 
to confirm his opinion that Germany was being woefully 
misled and that the conduct of her armies was despicable. 
And yet, he respected and admired German culture, and he 
had more than once paid tribute to German efficiency, which 
he believed was due largely to the spirit of self-sacrifice 
and devotion to the commonwealth manifested by all classes 
of Germans. For France his affection was deep. But, like 
many another American, he was inclined to generalize upon, 
and draw wrong deductions from, the atmosphere and out- 
ward tendencies of the French. Withal, he had a keen 
appreciation of French thought as well as of French art. 
Quick-witted, never too serious in the form of his thought, 
lucid and clear-cut in his statements, and always strongly 
individualistic and daring in his mental attitude toward 
everything, he could understand the French. No retail 
merchant in America had ever been so strongly influenced 
by French precedents, and he alone had created a French 
atmosphere and carried French stocks in all kinds of goods.’ 
England was a country that he loved almost as much as 
France and with which he never did as much business as 
he wanted to. It was incredible that French and British 
should be fighting Germans; that Austrians should have 
started the war; and that almost before the world knew it 


*Wanamaker was the first American retail merchant to buy his goods 
directly and regularly from the French producers through his own offices 
in Paris; he was the first to receive comments on French openings in gowns 
and hats by cable and to publish a magazine of Paris styles. The statement 
of his carrying ‘‘stocks in all kinds of goods” is not an exaggeration. He 
taught his buyers to consider France as part of the home market, and to 
look to France for standard lines—not to meet competition or a demand, 
but to create a demand. His bookstore, for instance, imported books from 
France as a matter of course, although this was considered a startling 
innovation. 


370 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Germany had violated the neutrality of Belgium and was 
invading France with ruthless methods. 

His first public utterances were on August 6. In response 
to a telegram from the Chicago Examiner, inviting him to 
be a member of a “world-wide committee” to bring to a 
quick conclusion the war, Wanamaker replied: 


Horrible as it is, this war will not have been in vain if its very horrors 
and destruction bring about that long-wished-for everlasting peace, a 
time when nations shall not lift up swords against nations, neither shall 
they learn war any more. The churches and the whole civilized world 
should make this their prayer next Sunday and every day until the war 
ends. 


The same day in his store editorial he quoted from Wash- 
ington’s Farewell Address, and approved of Wilson’s neu- 
trality proclamation, on the ground that “it is our true 
policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any por- 
tion of the foreign world.” His reaction to the stupendous 
tragedy in Europe was that of the great bulk of his fellow- 
countrymen—relief at the thought that such a horror could 
not touch us. Therefore we should continue to “build 
up while other countries are tearing themselves down.” 
Because we were living “under Washington’s counsel,” the 
United States could boast of being 


the one nation that goes to bed at night unafraid and unanxious as to war. 
Thousands of miles lie between us and the carnage of the Old World, 
and without danger we are standing still looking off over sea and land— 
only with our eyes beholding the horror in that carnage. 


From this it was but a step to the open indorsement, 
despite the criticism that was just beginning to make itself 
heard, of the President’s policy. Before the end of August 
a Wanamaker editorial said: 


What next for America? First of all, let us firmly resolve that nothing 
shall draw the United States into the wild war of the world. The 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 371 


President at Washington is at the helm, and irrespective of our ances- 
tries, religion, or politics, the people, one and all, must stand solidly at 
his back to conserve peace abroad and good will at home. ~ 


A few weeks later came the next phase, which was but 
the reflection of the mental attitude of Americans as a whole, 
the demand that war stop. In his editorial of Septem- 
ber 28, 1914, he said: 


The war must, sust MusT cease soon. How can any or all nations 
continue to conduct it unless they are able to turn buttons into gold 
pieces? 


Some deny it now, for themselves and for their heroes, 
that Americans passed through stages of shock at the very 
beginning of the European war. The process was the same 
for a Roosevelt, a Wilson, and a Wanamaker as for “the 
man in the street.” * Before it happened, reports of the 
impending calamity were declared ridiculous. There would 
be no war. When it came, it was hard to accept, even 
though a fact; and the first impulse was to call the peoples 
of the Old World crazy, and to thank God that we were 
not as they were. This reflection made Americans thankful 
that they were not in it; so they affirmed that they never 
could get in it. President Wilson’s neutrality proclama- 
tion—at the time it was made—was universally approved, 
and there was a lot of talk about Washington’s farewell 
advice. It was the horror of the business that struck most 
people. Few Americans who had traveled were without 
friends on both sides. And our blood was so mixed in this 


* The record of public pronouncements speaks for itself. Private letters 
of leading men reveal even more strikingly the repugnance to the idea of 
war itself and the suspension of judgment as to the responsibility for it. 
For example, former President Taft wrote to Wanamaker from New Haven 
on November 25, 1914: “This war in Europe is dreadful, and I am trying 
to look forward to some useful results in all this débacle that those beautiful 
countries of Europe now present. After they get through I think they will 
want peace for a long time, and they may look to general arbitration 
treaties with some favour.” 


372 JOHN WANAMAKER 


country that it was difficult to find any circle in which there 
was not avowed championship of both groups of belliger- 
ents. It was not until Entente propaganda got in its work 
and the Germans in this country and on the high seas wan- 
tonly disregarded American feelings and American rights 
that the spectators in the far-off Western world began to 
be a unit in thumbs down to Germany. 

As the war was to him a horror and a calamity, and as 
he did not immediately attribute the responsibility of it to 
one side alone, it was natural that John Wanamaker should 
think of the alleviation of human suffering and that he 
should enlist under the Red Cross banner, whose mission 
was to minister to all the victims of war alike." Pioneer 
again, he had booths opened as official Red Cross stations, 
and donated advertising space to “a call to the Red Cross 
colors.” The booths in the Philadelphia store were opened 
on September 7, 1914. The next day Miss Mabel Board- 
man, presiding over the opening of the Wanamaker booths 
in the New York store, declared: 

“That Mr. Wanamaker should take the lead in this move- 
ment both in New York and Philadelphia is the greatest 
thing that could happen to us. All American cities will 
now follow his lead.” 

So appreciative was Miss Boardman of this first-minute 
support that she established and kept the Red Cross head- 
quarters for New York City in the store where she had 
found her ami de le premiére heure. 

But while there was no disposition as yet to condemn 
Germany unreservedly for precipitating the war, sympathy 


*He made this clear in his instructions for the formation of Red Cross 
committees in the stores. His people were all Americans, of course, but 
they came from different European stocks, and he wanted the composite 
background of the United States represented. He said that since the Red Cross 
idea was neutral, there should be “a German, an Austrian, a Frenchman, 
a Belgian, and an Englishman selected from each store family to run the 
Red Cross work.” 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 373 


was universal for her first victim. The war had not been 
of Belgium’s seeking and nothing that could come of it 
would be to her advantage. As the unwitting sufferers 
whose woes were being graphically presented in the daily 
press, their appeal for aid struck a peculiarly responsive 
chord. Wanamaker chartered a Norwegian steamship, and 
offered to transport free of charge food supplies sent by 
the citizens of Philadelphia. Within five days $170,000 
had been raised. When he learned that the Thelma could 
not carry all the food this money would buy, Wanamaker 
chartered a second ship. The Thelma sailed from Phila- 
delphia on November 12 and the Orn on November 25. 
To load the first ship Wanamaker worked unrelentingly. 
Although he was not well and had long days at the store, 
he purchased the cargo himself, and had to attend the cere- 
mony of seeing it sail." A few days later he wrote: 

I am so good-for-nothing, and sleeping comes so good, and I am too 
lazy even to hold a pen. I think I put any brains and strength I had 
into gathering 104,000 dollars in four days and in buying barrels and 


bags and loading them off on the T'he/ma and pushing her off last Wed- 
nesday or Thursday. My legs and head are still unrested. 


The Orn, with the overflow, did not tax the charterer in 
the same way that the Thelma had done. For others as 
well as for Wanamaker the sailing of these two ships, 
arranged for and supervised by the men themselves and not 
by a shipping company, was a welcome outlet for the nerv- 
ous energy that clamored to spend itself upon actual relief 
work. It was easy enough to give the dollars; it was 
harder to buy the kinds of food that would be most needed, 
to load the ships, and to get them off without delay. 

But Wanamaker’s work for Belgium did not stop at the 


* After returning from the sailing of the Thelma, the Belgian Consul- 
General wrote to Wanamaker in his own hand: “My first thought goes to 
you in a spirit of deep gratitude for your great generosity, and of unbounded 
admiration for the masterly way in which, under your leadership, the whole 
work has been carried on. Belgium will never forget.” 


374 JOHN WANAMAKER 


spectacular achievement that took only a few days. The 
files bear evidence to a continued interest (which was char- 
acteristic of the man) that lasted throughout the war. He 
thought that orphans might be brought over here, and then 
that whole families might be assisted to America. Follow- 
ing out this idea, he got into correspondence with various 
people and organizations. But he ran athwart of the immi- 
eration law, and Washington officials were adamant. Then 
he devised a plan for utilizing the skill of Belgian lace- 
workers (they were the first refugees) who had gone in 
hordes to France and England. It occurred to him that 
they might be gathered together and their industries started 
temporarily in certain centers of exile. He wrote to the 
Belgian Minister that if the government would follow 
out a plan like this and furnish the administrative personnel 
and the funds to start this work and keep it going he would 
underwrite it by taking all the lace they produced—not a 
part of it, but all of it, with no limit set on the amount. 

Speaking at a Racquet Club rally, when the funds were 
being raised to put food on the ships he had chartered, 
Wanamaker in a moment of enthusiasm declared: 

“We must save Belgium. We must stop the war. If 
there is no other way, let us ransom Belgium from Ger- 
many, even if we have to pay $100,000,000,000.” 

The statement made a tremendous sensation, and some 
newspapers made a lot of it. It was regarded as wholly 
impracticable. Wanamaker regretted that the remark had 
been so featured and had attracted so much attention. The 
“high lights” of his talk had been the importance of Bel- 
gium’s civilization and the duty of those who had plenty 
for themselves to respond generously to a nation’s cry of 
need, and he threw out the idea of ransoming Belgium 
simply as an illustration of the length to which we should 
be prepared to go to stop the war. He did not like the 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 375 


ridicule with which the suggestion was received; but it was 
difficult to back it up with fact or solid argument. It was 
a sore point with him for a long time. He alluded to it a 
year later in a business conference in which he said that he 
said “such outrageous things” and that he “often had such 
outrageous thoughts, as he had about Belgium.” But in 
1918 he told a friend that “the people who made so much 
fun of me when I said that we should stop the war, if it 
cost a hundred billion of dollars, will see now that I was 
not so crazy as they thought. When the actual cost of this 
World War is totaled up, it will be found to be a great 
deal more than a hundred billion dollars.” 

Another idea, equally startling but more practicable, 
aroused great interest in the first month of the war. We 
have seen how Wanamaker had been interested in the build- 
ing up of an American merchant marine when he was Post- 
master-General, and how, through mail subsidies, he had 
started to put the American flag back on the high seas. It 
was always a source of keen regret—even of anger—that 
the American people remained indifferent to the merchant 
marine and that no leader at Washington took it up vigor- 
ously and staked his political life on the issue. He loved to 
go to New York by the Central Railroad, so that he could 
have the ferry ride. The sight of the ships of the Ham- 
burg-American and North German Lloyd lines, tied up at 
Hoboken, had intrigued him. On August 19, 1914, he 


wrote: : 


This is the opportune moment to get a merchant marine. As an Ameri- 
can, I have been looking at those great ships, lying still in the Hoboken 
docks, with covetous eye. ‘They are now offered for sale. Yesterday 
morning at nine o’clock there were fourteen of them, ready for service 
under the American flag. 

Let the nation buy them. We couldn’t make a better business invest- 


* See above, vol. i, pp. 316-19. 


376 JOHN WANAMAKER 


ment. ‘They will form a commercial navy which will more than pay its 
way. 

What is $50,000,000 to the United States if it can create overnight 
such a large part of a merchant marine needed in the face of the dawning 
new era! We have spent the nation’s wealth on its railroads; now let 
us make a beginning with ships. 


The Wanamaker plan created a stir at Washington, espe- 
cially as it was made concrete by the suggestion that these 
German ships could be purchased—or new ships built—out 
of the thirty per cent surplus of Postal Savings Banks. 
President Wilson declined to comment on Wanamaker’s 
plea. He would not even commit himself to the idea of 
building a merchant marine with government aid. 

When the international complications that might result 
from acquiring the German ships were brought to his atten- 
tion Wanamaker said: 


If there is any international law against our becoming the owners of 
the idle ships in the port of New York, the sooner it is known the better, 
that other plans may go forward—the work of building great ships at 
Cramp’s, at New York, Camden, Newport News, and San Francisco. 
What if the ships will not pay? Neither does the Navy nor the War 
Department. Anything but tepid indefiniteness. It is absurd to say that 
the United States could not man the ships with American seamen. 


Wanamaker’s contention that the United States was a 
seafaring nation, with a future on the seas, goes back to 
1873, when he helped George H. Stuart organize a mass 
meeting of representative merchants in Philadelphia to 
insist upon the importance of restoring the American flag 
to the high seas. At that time it had only recently disap- 
peared, and it could have been brought back without much 
effort or sacrifice, had not the nation gone mad over rail- 
roads. What Wanamaker said in 1914 had been in his mind 
for over forty years. He had done what he could when 
he was Postmaster-General, and he came out in advocacy of 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 377 


an American merchant marine at the time of the Spanish- 
American War and afterward. So much interest was 
aroused among business men by Wanamaker’s renewal of 
the plea for an American merchant marine in 1914 that 
chambers of commerce organized special committees to 
report on how public opinion could be aroused. Wana- 
maker’s mail was full of invitations to speak and requests 
for letters or statements. A large firm in Chicago put “an 
open letter to John Wanamaker” as an advertisment in four 
hundred newspapers, approving his stand and calling upon 
him to lead in the movement. The letter stated: 


Now is certainly a most excellent time for the American people to 
find out how much they can do for themselves of the things they have 
been depending upon foreign workmen to do. We not only can, but 
must, find out now whether or not this nation can stand firm on its own 
two hundred million feet and make its own inventions to meet its own 
necessities and provide its own luxuries, and at the same time feed and 
clothe a great part of the rest of the world. We have the youth, energy, 
capital, will, the men and women to do these things. We can do every- 
thing that we are called upon to do, but deliver the goods, and we can’t 
deliver the goods because we have no merchant marine. Let us get the 
ships first of all. It will be no trouble to put crews and cargoes aboard 
them. We must start ploughing the seas for an early harvest. 


The disorganization of business that followed upon the 
declaration of war and the temporary cutting off of trade 
with Europe led many to predict a hard winter for the 
United States. This tendency to pessimism, although he 
knew it had some foundation, was fought by Wanamaker. 
He recognized the danger signals, but he thought it was a 
time for boldness. Speaking to the Rotary Club of Phila- 
delphia on September 28, 1914, he said, “Optimism will 
boom trade.” He pointed out that if only the American 
business men and bankers would have a little confidence and 
keep money in circulation hard times would not be badly 
felt because either the war would suddenly end, bringing 


378 JOHN WANAMAKER 


a boom after it, or its continuance and the withdrawal of 
most able-bodied men from industry and agriculture in the 
European countries would create an unprecedented demand 
for all that we could produce. He set the example by 
boldly placing large orders and announcing that the Wana- 
maker stores intended to do their full part, at whatever 
risk, in keeping mills and factories open. ‘The more goods 
the public co-operate with us in moving,” he declared, “the 
longer we will put off hard times, and if we put them off a 
few months, they will never come at all.” 

When unemployment became serious in Philadelphia, his 
daughter, Mrs. Warburton, of the Emergency Aid Fund, 
asked his aid in putting an appeal for $100,000 before the 
people. He gave up the whole Wanamaker page in the 
Philadelphia newspapers to second the Emergency Aid 
Fund’s call upon Philadelphia for the entire sum in a single 
day. He wrote the appeal himself. The money was 
raised. 

In the spring of 1915 it began to be realized that the 
war in Europe was going to last a long time and that it 
might, if prolonged indefinitely, upset the social fabric of 
Europe. This set Americans to thinking how the power of 
this country might make itself felt to end the war, not 
only for humanity’s sake, but also because the continuance 
of the conflict might deplete Europe and bring about 
social disorders that would have their repercussion in Amer- 
ica. Leading Americans organized what they called “The 
League to Enforce Peace,” with William H. Taft as presi- 
dent and A. Lawrence Lowell as chairman of the Executive 
Committee. This committee contained a curious mixture 
of names, some of idealists, some of practical business men, 
and others of men distinguished for their realistic rdle in 
politics. Wanamaker was invited to the preliminary Phila- 
delphia conference on June 17, by Taft, with the idea 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 379 


that he might be willing to serve on the Executive Com- 
mittee. A month previously an urgent invitation had come 
to join the group that was organizing the National Security 
League. His friendship for Taft, under ordinary circum- 
stances, would have made him accept without delay the 
request to give his name to the League to Enforce Peace; 
while his great respect for Choate was an argument for 
going into the National Security League. But he could not 
bring himself to feel that it was wise to rush impulsively 
into either of these organizations. He did agree to be one 
of the signatories of a non-committal call to a mass meeting 
out of which grew the Philadelphia branch of the National 
Security League, and later he became its not very active 
chairman. But as late as October 6, 1915, we find Judge 
Parker writing to Wanamaker that he was “one of the small 
number from whom an expression of opinion regarding the 
proposals of our League has not yet been received,” and 
urged him again to go on the roll of charter members and 
to send in any criticism that he “might care to make.” 

Wanamaker, like most Americans, was by this time full 
of resentment against the Germans and on the way to 
becoming a partisan. He struggled against the feeling, and 
tried honestly to put the broader goal of universal peace, 
speedily obtained, above the fortunes of any single nation. 
The sinking of the Lusitania, however, had been a rude 
awakening. When the first news came he said to an Eve- 
ning Journal man: 

“Tt is partly my funeral, because three of my business 
family were on board the ship. I had the privilege of a 
quiet hour with the Emperor of Germany, and I do not 
believe that he is responsible for this catastrophe that 
involves the United States. Whoever are responsible for 
the conduct of the war must have lost their heads. Please 


380 JOHN WANAMAKER 


spare me from talking further. The only one to speak now 
is the President of the United States. God help him.” 

Consumed with anxiety over the fate of his buyers, 
he sent messages to Ambassador Page, through the State 
Department, and cabled his grandson and namesake, who 
was then in the London office, to go immediately to Queens- 
town. He sat up all night in anguish waiting for news, 
and told the reporters: 

“You gentlemen think it hard to be a reporter, but it is 
harder sometimes to be an employer. Imagine how I feel 
over this because if I had not sent Mr. Tesson to Europe 
he would not have been on the Lusitania, and if he had not 
been there Mrs. Tesson would not have been, either.” 

Tesson was head of the shoe department in the New York 
store and he was en route to Russia to arrange for delivery 
on a boot contract, one of the largest that had been given 
out. Concerning that contract Wanamaker never spoke 
again. He lost all interest in it. The horror of the Lusi- 
tania sinking entered his soul. He made an address at the 
funeral of Mr. and Mrs. Tesson which gave offense to 
“hyphenates.” * To his store family he proposed the fol- 
lowing resolution, which was adopted and telegraphed to 
Washington: 


WHEREAS, In view of the assault upon the Lusitania and the sinking 
of a passenger ship making a peaceful voyage, carrying among others some 
hundreds of American citizens—men, women and children, traveling on 
their private and peaceful business, without a moment’s warning, who 
were sent to their death. And, 


WHEREAS, In a recent note forwarded to the German Empire by 
the President of the United States, he advised Germany that in such an 


*German sympathizers wrote indignant letters, closing their accounts. 
Before the Lusitania tragedy, Wanamaker used to answer some of these 
letters. After he realized that there were men and women in the United 
States who justified that act, he paid no attention to letters of “hyphenates.” 
He once said that if he were dependent upon doing business with this type 
of person, he would close his stores, 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 381 


event the United States would hold the German Empire to a strict 
accountability,— 

RESOLVED, That we American citizens, whether native or foreign 
born, and without regard to political party, race, creed, or religion, do 
declare ourselves, our persons, and our fortunes in a pledge to support the 
President of the United States in any decision or action he may take 
in the promises to uphold the honor of our country in defense of and 
for the protection of the lives of all or any of our fellow-citizens and 
hereto we apply our signatures. 


By midsummer he had come to the point in his thinking 
where he was ready to say: 


Peace talk is mostly fol-de-rol at the present moment. There can be 
no peace until capable, well-informed, and thoroughly well-balanced men 
look over all the questions and rights and wrongs, and play the game 
fairly to just conclusions that should be plainly proclaimed to all nations. 
This is a time for war by wise men’s minds and true men’s hearts 
without guns and submarines. Business statesmanship as well as patriotism 
is the hourly call just now. 


This led to an effort on the part of the New York Ameri- 
can to commit him to pronounce between intervention in 
the European war and summoning a council of neutrals to 
define the scope of neutral rights and provide for enforcing 
them. Wanamaker was not ready to say what he thought 
about this, but he shifted his reply to a question: 


Are we callous and careless enough to sit still and see this war go on, 
because some of us are getting money from munitions made in this 
country, or are we big enough, brave enough, and humane enough to 
pledge our wealth and strength, if need be, all our money, to save the 
world from years of continuous bloodshed? 


Three weeks later, when Henry Ford issued his famous 
plea for education as the means of destroying “the parasites 
that breed war,”” Wanamaker telegraphed him on August 23, 
IQI5: 


Delighted to read your speech to the public on financing peace instead 


382 JOHN WANAMAKER 


of war in to-day’s Hera/d. I have the same disposition to do anything 
and spend everything if thereby the millions of men that are sinking into 
graves from lust of bloodshed can be stopped. Your horse sense turned 
into statesmanship will avail more than all the money you and others 
can scrape together. Come along and have a night with Edison at my 
country home to talk things over. 


Ford accepted the invitation with alacrity. He gave out 
to the press the Wanamaker invitation and declared that 
he hoped that it would lead to getting Edison’s co-opera- 
tion in constructive peace. To the Detroit reporters he 
said: 

“T am highly pleased, of course, with Mr. Wanamaker’s 
indorsement of my views as to peace. I cannot forecast 
what will occur at the meeting, but I believe that in the 
united efforts of certain citizens working actively in various 
parts of the United States toward the common end of peace, 
a great deal will be accomplished.” 

Nothing came of the Wanamaker-Edison-Ford ‘peace 
conference,” in so far as two members of the trio were 
concerned. Edison did not see what could be done by 
private initiative to bring about peace; nor did Wana- 
maker. The episode ended in newspaper gossip. But when 
a second winter in the trenches seemed inevitable, Henry 
Ford yielded toa generous impulse and decided to go ahead. 
Badly advised, he announced in November his peace-ship 
project. We must remember that Ford had come into 
national prominence only the year before through his mini- 
mum-wage pronouncement, which he put into action in his 
own factories. He was as yet inexperienced in the ways of 
the world. When he gave out a statement concerning the 
peace ship, with the list of those invited to go to Europe to 
stop the war, a number of the prominent men on the list 
were prompt in repudiating or ridiculing the Ford plan. 
They said they would never dream of accepting the invita- 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 333 


tion and resented the publication of their names. They 
must have been annoyed by the letters and telegrams and 
comments of their friends. Wanamaker received hundreds 
of messages, a few urging him to go, but most of them 
condemning the scheme. Because of the previous invita- 
tion he had given to Ford and Edison to talk about peace, 
there were some who jumped to the conclusion that the 
Ford peace ship was the result of Wanamaker’s encourage- 
ment of Ford’s August pronouncement.’ 

Indirectly, probably, it was; but Wanamaker had not 
been informed of the actual plan before his name was linked 
with it, and from the first moment he did not entertain the 
idea of going on what he believed would be a wild-goose 
chase. His papers of this period show that he was begin- 
ning to feel that any intervention from America would 
be regarded as propaganda to help Germany against the 
Entente Powers. But his relations with Ford had always 
been friendly, and he held Ford in great esteem. Although 
he believed in preparedness, while Ford was more or less 
of a pacifist, Wanamaker understood and respected—even 
approved—the general attitude of Ford toward peace. The 
peace-ship project, and the use of his name in connection 
with it, did not please him. But he refused to repudiate 
Ford or ridicule the project. His sense of loyalty forbade 
that. He told the press that he was willing to do anything 
to help Ford to end the war. At the same time he tele- 
phoned Ford that he doubted the wisdom of the plan, but 
wanted to talk it over fully. So he invited Ford to come 


*Press comments of the time bear out this statement. It is also evident 
from a great number of letters, some written by intelligent people, who 
linked together the September conference with Ford’s November plan. Cranks 
from all over the country wrote to Wanamaker begging him to take them 
along on the peace ship and numerating their qualifications for collaborating 
and putting an end to the war. That Wanamaker read some of these 
letters—and that he kept his temper in reading them—is evidenced by pen- 
ciled notes, written in a kindly vein. A number of those who wanted to go 
on the peace ship were friends or acquaintances. 


384 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to Philadelphia. The account of the visit we have in Wan- 
amaker’s own words: 


Mr. Henry Ford came from Washington with his Secretary and had 
luncheon with me. 

The two hours’ conversation was simply going over the statement I 
made over the phone, when he asked me to go with his party, which 
he perfectly understood at the time and was misreported in some of the 
newspapers, as he confirmed what I said, which was that I would go to 
the end of the world with him if I could help to stop the war. 

There was an “if” in it, and the “if” was the further words said 
to him at that time, that I must know who the party was that he was 
making up and what the plans were to accomplish definite results. He 
confirmed exactly what I had said and stated to me his idea and his 
belief, urging me to go with him. 

I tried to set before him the difficulties of his position and the time 
slipped away, when he had to meet an engagement in New York, and I 
agreed to another interview with him, or his Secretary, or both of them, 
at his convenience. 


John Wanamaker did not go with Henry Ford to Europe. 
Even before the end of 1915 he had begun to feel that 
our intervention on the side of the Entente Powers might 
prove to be the way out. At any rate, he had been too long 
in business, and his whole life had been too much the story 
of building solid foundations and looking ahead, for him 
not to feel that we were drifting along foolishly when 
the Old World was afire. In August, in approving the 
general tenor of Ford’s statement, he had been careful to 
write a letter to the New York Herald, pointing out that 
his whole life had been a lesson in preparedness and that 
he hoped none of his friends would believe that he indorsed 
policies harmful to the interests of national defense. He 
had been one of the Philadelphians to sign the call for the 
National Defense Conference in July, 1915, and in numer- 
ous talks to his store people he spoke of preparedness as a 
duty. 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 385 


And he was looking ahead to the competition for markets 
that would result from the war. In a business conference 
on October 6, 1915, he said: 

“Japan is going to be the hardest nation to overcome. 
Those people can imitate anything. We are having hun- 
dreds of things made in Japan for us. Now I suppose 
every little workshop in Germany is standing just as it did 
before the war. They can’t sell goods to England; Eng- 
land won’t have them. They can’t sell them to France; 
they will expect to sell them to South America and the 
United States. You say they haven’t any money. Well, 
money is a commodity like everything else. They will come 
over here and there will be plenty of money to lend them. 
It will be like giving them a stiletto to stick into our 
business.” 

The second winter of the war brought to Wanamaker 
the desire to go to England and France. He wanted to 
see how things were going, and to talk with old friends. 
Two years and a half had elapsed since his last visit. But 
business held him as closely as ever, and he was not dis- 
pleased that it did. He wrote almost gleefully that there 
were questions that only he could settle, and that while his 
son Rodman was in New York he had to be in Philadelphia. 
He recorded: 


No man of seventy-seven can know that he is indispensable and at 
the same time know that he is old. Of course every man can be replaced, 
and things would go on without me; but as long as God is using a man, 
as long as a man serves, he isn’t on the shelf. I dare not think at present 
of putting the ocean between myself and the many critical things about 
the business that arise each week. I must keep touch, too, with the posi- 
tion our variable President takes regarding the war. 


Business was increasing by leaps and bounds with the 
unparalleled prosperity that had come about just as the mer- 
chant with vision had prophesied when he pleaded for opti- 


386 JOHN WANAMAKER 


mism shortly after the war opened. Butas factories turned to 
producing war materials, it became harder and more expen- 
sive to get good and sufficient merchandise. ‘The stocks 
from Europe, which the Wanamaker stores had always fea- 
tured, were uncertain in quality and quantity and especially 
in time of delivery. His diary shows how Wanamaker had 
begun to be annoyed about the slowness of steamer com- 
munication and the censorship. We find entries such as: 


3-24. Sometimes a week comes along without any letters from Europe. 
I notice that we seldom nowadays have more than one mail steamer leav- 
ing each week. 

4-14. I have not many letters from Europe and all of them are cen- 
sored and cut open and sometimes words cut out and some of them 
delayed three weeks. Letters come cut up and stamped censored. Impor- 
tant mail is afloat somewhere. 


While thousands who had never bought at Wanamaker’s 
before were flocking in and demanding the best grades of 
everything, it became increasingly difficult to keep up with 
the demands, and by offering high wages factories were 
beginning to lure men and women from mercantile pursuits. 


From the April, 1916, diary we take: 


To think that we are in the twenty-fifth year of our boys’ soldiering 
at the store and that the country is only now falling into line. 

I have been all alone for two weeks; my people are at Green Briar, 
and return Sunday night next. It is hard to cross ferries and go to 
New York, and many things I want to do are out of all possibilities when 
I have to do them alone. I can only struggle and limp along. We are 
very busy in the two stores. We are all on the jump all the time. 
I am quite well and at work sixteen hours almost every day. But I have 
my reward and my inspiration. The entire store glows with life and 
beauty. 

Last night I went to the country and stopped all night and was 
refreshed by it. No leaves are out as yet on the trees, but there are 
robins and blackbirds hopping about. 

Good Friday—Just now the President’s visit to Congress yesterday is 
absorbing the public thought and some fears are expressed of probable 


FIRST YEARS OF THE EUROPEAN WAR 387 


war. I do not believe we shall rush into war. The people of America 
are patient and loath to enter upon war paths. They will not do so 
even now unless Congress forces the President to instant action. I am 
still hopeful that peace will come without bloodshed on American soil 
or on U. S. ships. But who can tell? I am very well, very busy, very 
hopeful of continuing good times. 


When President Wilson called out the National Guard 
for service on the Mexican border, more than a hun- 
dred employees in the Philadelphia store and eighty from 
the New York store went with their regiments. Wana- 
maker announced that they would all receive full salaries 
during their absence; and on April 8, 1916, the Red, White 
and Blue Cross was incorporated for war service. It was 
an organization of the store family, and he accepted the 
active presidency. Every employee was a member; and 
this organization, fourteen thousand strong, as set forth in 
the charter, was formed “for the purpose of education and 
preparation for, and co-operative service in, public emer- 
gency.” On the night of the incorporation, speaking to his 
Philadelphia store family, the president of the Red, White 
and Blue Cross said: 

“God forbid that ever another war should come in this 
country or with any other country, but if it ever does, no 
American, old or young, from South or North, will be slow 
to answer the call of the colors which are so dear to us all. 
I believe in national preparedness.” * 


*'The stenographic notes of a meeting of the Property Committee of the 
Philadelphia Board of Education, which met at the N. E. Manual Training. 
School on June 28, 1916, to discuss a new building, show that John Wana- 
maker upheld Dr. Morrison’s plea that the building make adequate provision 
for the physical training of every student. Commenting on the principal’s 
desire for an armory for drills, Wanamaker said: “We are not going to be 
a military nation, but we are going to be prepared as we haven’t been for 
fifteen years. I blame both Taft and Roosevelt, with all the knowledge 
they had of foreign countries, through our consuls, that they didn’t know 
what was going on, instead of leaving it until it is hard work to get ready. 
The gymnasium floor should be large enough to meet the needs of the future. 
With all this ground I should certainly make here a drill room for 2,000 
young men.” 


388 JOHN WANAMAKER 


When President Wilson spoke strongly to Germany and 
when he seemed as if he were going to abandon the course 
of temporizing, he had no more vigorous and loyal sup- 
porter than John Wanamaker. There had been a long 
silence on the subject of the war in the store editorials until 
Wilson sent an ultimatum to Germany threatening the rup- 
ture of diplomatic relations if merchant ships continued to 
be sunk. Over his signature Wanamaker published on 


April 20, 1916: 


Rallying to the colors! Old Glory yesterday, despite wind and 
weather, reigned supreme. Everywhere the boys big and little sang, 
“We are coming, Father Wilson, on your first call one hundred thousand 
strong, and millions more to follow when needed.” Our young fellows 
flock to the flag, pledged to carry it to victory, and for the third time 
the writer accepts the privilege to declare himself ready personally to do 
military duty in office or camp. 


The following day, Wanamaker called attention to the 
fact that a year before he had printed an appeal to the 
business men of the nation “to stand squarely behind the 
President.” 


It seemed then a conscientious duty. ‘To-day it is even more a plain 
duty. On this Good Friday, the day of the Cross of a lonely man in 
Jerusalem, let us lay off our politics and sectarianism and think of the 
burdened man at Washington, chosen by the votes of the people to be 
their President for four years, and give to him due and unqualified sup- 
port, and concentrate all our strength to help him. These are solemn 
days for the nation and doubly solemn for the Chief Executive. Let it 
not be said by the President that the men who could have helped failed 
him when he needed them most. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 


HE failure of Woodrow Wilson to follow up his rep- 
resentation to Germany by energetic measures, and 
to lead in preparing the nation for what might come, was 
a bitter disappointment to many Americans who were will- 
ing to “stand by the President.” The German reply to the 
American ultimatum, provoked by the torpedoing of the 
Sussex, published at the beginning of May, did not satisfy 
Americans of the Wanamaker type. Wilson’s answer to 
it was to them an indication that his leadership could no 
longer be counted upon. When asked if he was willing to 
go as a delegate to the Republican Convention, Wanamaker 
consented.* 


At the beginning of June, 1916, he recorded: 


Here I am again elected to go to Chicago to help in choosing a Presi- 
dent. I go on the 4th—to stop there for a week at least. It is not a 
pleasurable employment for me to have. 


* Throughout the first administration of Woodrow Wilson no prominent 
Republican had supported him more loyally than John Wanamaker, who 
always tried to understand him and who believed it the duty of the citizen 
to stand by the President, irrespective of party. From the time he was an 
instructor at Bryn Mawr, Wilson had been a customer on the books of the 
Wanamaker store, and when he was a college professor he had more than 
one occasion to appreciate the consideration of John Wanamaker. Wana- 
maker was head of the committee that escorted Governor Wilson to lay the 
corner stone of the Y. M. C. A. building at Atlantic City in 1912. Although 
he had worked so hard for the re-election of Taft, Wanamaker accepted the 
Democratic administration “like a good sport.” He gave material aid to the 
new President in his first year by his “Don’t Be Blue” speech at the Union 
League on January 1, 1914, and by his ringing support of Wilson’s Mexican 
policy at the dedication of the Manufacturers’ Club on March 23 of the 
same year. On May 22, 1914, before the war clouds broke in Europe, he 
asked the Pennsylvania Jewelers’ Association Convention to give President 
Wilson their sympathetic understanding and assurance of loyal encouragement 
in his difficult tasks. 


389 


390 JOHN WANAMAKER 


And after he got there, he wrote on the third day of the 
convention: 


These lead-pencil notes are made on the Lake Shore as I sit in my 
auto in the rain in front of the Auditorium waiting for a man to come 
to me in preference to going into the surging crowds of men-midwives 
engaged in bringing into the world a new President for the nation. 
Whatever candidate is chosen here is likely to be that. I arrived on Mon- 
day at 3 o’clock. We are settled at the Hotel Virginia, not much of a 
hotel, but a quiet comfortable apartment house. All the hotels are mobbed 
by the delegates and the thousands of hangers-on who came to work for 
their favorite candidate in the hope of favors to come. 

Chicago looks bigger than ever and it is more and more wonderful in 
its up-and-at-it-ness. Its Parks and Boulevards are splendid. ‘They must 
have big men here to do such marvelous things. 

It looks as if it will be Saturday night before we can get through, 
though the meeting for organization is to be to-morrow. ‘There is much 
excitement, as Roosevelt is again to the fore and a serious obstacle he is 
to harmony. Justice Hughes could be easily nominated if he would 
declare himself a candidate. All along he has declined to allow anyone 
to speak for him or to say that he is a candidate. 

As I write the rain is coming down in sheets and the day icold and 
dreary. 


That all his time was not given to the convention and 
all his admiration to the physical aspect of Chicago is indi- 
cated by what Wanamaker put down on June 8: 


Our stores are not as smart as they think themselves to be. The Field 
stores are marvels in their many superiorities. They are lavish in spaces, 
fixtures, and magnitude of stocks. We can learn much if my eyes serve 
me rightly as I looked them over for a few hours this morning. 


We could fill pages with comments of this nature, extend- 
ing over half a century, to demonstrate the open-minded- 
ness of John Wanamaker and his everlasting eagerness to 
learn. He gave everybody his due—in his diary at least— 
and he was ungrudging in his praise of other cities than 
Philadelphia and New York and of other stores than his 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 391 


own. He was constantly saying that we lived to learn, 
and that there was no possibility of learning if we were satis- 
fied with our own achievements. Once to his Bible class 
he put this thought forcefully, “God is the only one who 
can safely look at His work and call it good; it is dangerous 
for anybody else to try that!” 

His lack of sympathy with politicians was largely due to 
their failure to pay attention to the successes, the abilities, 
the outstanding qualities of other men. Wanamaker had 
found that the successful merchant only remained so by a 
constant study of what others were doing in merchandising. 
Political life, on the other hand, tended to give the man in 
office so great an esteem of himself that he discounted—or 
even ignored—competitors. Roosevelt had long been that 
way; Wilson was displaying the same symptoms. “In the 
hot box of the convention day and night, endeavoring to 
cool off the Progressives and pull out the Roosevelt stops,” 
to use Wanamaker’s own language, the veteran Philadel- 
phian, in the caucus of the Pennsylvania delegation and in 
contact with other party leaders, appealed for a sane view- 
point and the putting of party interests above factional 
fights. He sympathized with the reluctance of Hughes, 
but insisted that it was his duty to run for the nomination. 
Against the passionate arguments of many of his friends, 
Wanamaker stood for Hughes in 1916 as he had stood for 
Taft in 1912. Not anticipating a Progressive bolt this 
time, he felt that the country would sweep Hughes into 
office as a protest against the alternative blowing hot and 
cold of Wilson in his attitude toward the European war. 

After returning from the convention he made a statement 
to the press in which he expressed his satisfaction at the 
nomination of Justice Hughes, which he had advocated 
from the first. 


392 JOHN WANAMAKER 


To my personal knowledge every effort was made honestly and con- 
scientiously to bring together the good men who saw no reason for longer 
separation when an imminent crisis was facing the country. 

I never saw so many tall, breezy, six-footed Westerners and Southerners 
together. They were the sons of wars, brave defenders and at their best, 
even though gray headed, in their determination to conserve the results 
for which they have fought. ‘They were men of high candle power, 
creating the light of conscience, honor, and duty for these perilous times. 
The manifest purpose was to stand together for one country, one Consti- 
tution, one flag, and a wholesome and gigantic national growth of our 
ever-increasing country, and the full establishment of the principles of 
human rights and the powers of the government. Anything short of this 
would have failed to reach the harmony that prevailed. At every point 
the American Flag unfurled itself as worthy of honor by self-respecting 
men, desiring peace with all the earth, and yet resolute in the determina- 
tion that the flag should be respected by nations as well as men. 

I was glad to be called upon by Indiana to present the name of 
Charles W. Fairbanks, for Vice-President, so well known by his long, 
useful life, and so well proven as the adviser of Presidents of the past 
generation, that his work was recognized by the 863 votes which made 
him the running mate on the ticket that has met with almost universal 
approbation since it was named. 


As the summer went on and the campaign began to gather 
momentum Wanamaker was informed that Hughes was not 
making a favorable impression on the country. The cam- 
paign was not being well managed by the Republicans, who 
underestimated the strength of Wilson’s position as the man 
who had kept the country out of the war. Wanamaker was 
told that the unthinking masses were inclined also to attrib- 
ute the general prosperity that came from the war orders 
of the Entente Powers to the success of the Democratic 
administration. This report, which he knew had been care- 
fully prepared for him by able men, thoroughly aroused 
Wanamaker. He accepted the invitation to become one of 
the fifty members of the National Council on August 23, 
and attended the meeting of the Advisory Committee of 
the Republican National Committee a week later. Wana- 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 393 


maker was far from satisfied with what was being done, and 
was alarmed at the optimism expressed to him at campaign 
headquarters. He thought that the confidence of the 
National Committeemen was not justified, and he decided 
to do what he could to arouse the country." Wanamaker 
had seen on the very evening of this committee meeting 
a full-page advertisement in Collier's Weekly. It was 
headed, “Why Business Men Will Vote for Wilson.” 
There was a picture of “President Wilson signing the Fed- 
eral Reserve Act—the law that abolished panics,” and 
underneath this caption was the statement: “Our national 
wealth has increased $41,000,000,000 in two years. This 
is not due to war. What did it?” 

The use of such arguments angered him. He had now 
come to believe that the Wilson policy of watchful wait- 
ing, transferred from Mexico to Europe, was shameful and 
that the repudiation of Wilson was needed “to rehabilitate 
the United States in the eyes of the world and to restore 


*In the 1920 campaign Harding wrote to Wanamaker from Marion, 
asking his advice about the conduct of the campaign. In his answer, dated 
September 16, 1920, Wanamaker said: ‘The last election was lost not by the 
efficiency of the Democratic Committee, but by the inefficiency of the Repub- 
lican Committee, which was bone sure that Hughes would be elected.” 
Wanamaker’s 1916 diary and the penciled notes he made as aides-mémoire 
for conversations with the National Committee prove that this statement 
was not hindsight. On August 30, 1916, he figured out that, subtracting 
Sundays, there were left “52 working days to November 1, requiring 24 hour 
days of Herculean energy and unceasing labor.”? He believed that Wilson 
was ‘“‘meddling with labor to its manifest hurt,” and that during the admin- 
istration he had shown a “faculty for blundership instead of leadership, from 
the desertion of Belgium through the failure to seize the Lusitania oppor- 
tunity right on to the Mexico zigzags.” He wanted the party to promise to 
“repeal the income tax of all women until suffrage was granted.” He 
thought that the Republican party should adopt such slogans as “peace by 
brains without buncombe” and “practical protection to producers promises 
permanent prosperity.” He told the committee that they had to “capture 
New Jersey at any cost” and to “get a Hughes grip on a forceful newspaper 
in all most important cities to do as good work for Hughes as the New York 
World was doing against him.” Above all he begged the committee to “stop 
sending out milk-and-water stuff,” and “to instruct the campaigners to read- 
just speeches so that the basis of attack would not be against Woodrow 
Wilson personally, but would contain clear-cut stuff of what Wilson could 
have done by prompt action.” 


394. JOHN WANAMAKER 


American self-respect and security.” The idea of aiding 
the Hughes campaign by counter-advertising on a large scale 
came to him. On October 6, the stenographic notes of a 
business conference with his executives in the Philadelphia 
store show that he said: 


I told some of the members of the National Committee yesterday 
that we were on the eve of digging a hole deeper than the trenches if 
Wilson is re-elected, because it will mean going on with the present 
tariff. ‘The Democratic party is trying to show in its advertising that 
the prosperity has come through Wilson. The présent prosperity is of a 
transient nature. It is simply an incident of the World War. Without 
the war to save us, we should have had a panic worse than the Grover 
Cleveland panic. It is perfectly nonsensical for the Democrats always 
to refer to the manufacturers as the “‘bloated aristocracy.” You can’t get 
prosperity unless people work. ‘Their labor creates goods and thereby 
purchasing power. Low prices mean nothing if we do not have good 
wages. I believe that we—the four of us here—could write an editorial 
and publish it as an advertisement, and begin it just as I began this 
statement. 


When Wanamaker went to work on his own suggestion, 
he found that his answer to the Democrats developed into 
twelve full-page advertisements, which he published in a 
supplement to the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph on 
October 23. The next day they were reprinted, at John 
Wanamaker’s expense, in fifty of the leading papers of the 
United States. Proofs of the advertisements, which were 
profusely illustrated, were sent to delegates of the Chicago 
Convention, members of the National Committee, and state 
chairmen. Wanamaker offered to send paper matrices of 
the set to any newspaper in the United States that asked for 
them. In the last week of October telegrams were received 
by the hundred from all over the country. Western news- 
papers were especially interested, and some state commit- 
tees saw that the Wanamaker advertisements were inserted 
in every paper in their state. It was an achievement in 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 395 


political advertising unique in the annals of the United 
States. 

The most striking of the Wanamaker advertisements were 
those that pilloried the foreign policy of the Democratic 
party. One of these had a picture of the Capitol at the top 
and the White House at the bottom. A sentence stood out 
in bold type: “Held as a great power but a short while ago, 
America to-day faces the indifference or scorn of many of 
the nations that once gave her merited homage.” Another, 
headed by snapshots of the Panama Canal, declared that 
Hughes was “first in war, fearless, and first in peace with 
honor.” It states that the basis of America’s power to serve 
humanity after the war “will depend chiefly upon her own 
prosperity,” and warned against an influx of Japanese goods. 
The crescendo reached its height in the twelfth advertise- 
ment. At the top was an American flag, headed “Old 
Glory,” and followed by the statement that the flag 


has always stood, and will ever stand, for a Nation not “too proud to 
fight”—-a Nation loving peace, loving justice, loving harmony and amity 
with all mankind, yet insisting courageously, unflinchingly, with unvary- 
ing determination that the rights of mankind, symbolized by the sacred 
folds of the Stars and Stripes, shall not be sacrificed or downtrodden by 
any Nation, and that the person and property of every American shall be 
inviolate, wherever found, in every part of the world. 


The effect of the advertisements was felt in critical and 
strategic regions, and up to the last day of the campaign 
requests kept pouring in for the matrices. On October 30 
Will H. Hays, who was then chairman of the Indiana State 
Committee, wrote Wanamaker congratulating him upon the 
services he was rendering the party in the Middle West 
and telling him how much good the advertisements were 
doing in Indiana and neighboring states. In answer to a 
similar letter from Nicholas Murray Butler, Wanamaker 
told the president of Columbia University that he had urged 


396 JOHN WANAMAKER 


advertisements of this kind upon the committee “many 
weeks ago. I believe we could have started a prairie fire 
for Hughes if only they had understood the practical nature 
of such work.” 

But there was comment of another character just as there 
had been the year before when he had refused to go on 
Ford’s peace ship and when he had denounced the sinking 
of the Lusitania. Letters came in from irate “Little Ameri- 
cans” and from “hyphenates” announcing the intention of 
giving up buying at his stores. When he happened to see 
these letters he answered them. His reply to a rich Ger- 
man-American who lived at the Biltmore Hotel is a classic. 
On November 4, 1916, he wrote: 


I have your esteemed letter of November 3, and I do not express my 
regret that you are taking your name from our books. I sell furniture 
and other things, but I do not sell my birthright of acting as my con- 
science dictates, irrespective of selling goods. ‘The same liberty that you 
take to yourself, I have always taken for myself, and I regret that we 
cannot think of larger questions than the selling and buying of goods 
when the good or ill of one hundred millions of people is at stake. 


So alarmed were the Democrats at the effect of the adver- 
tising that two days before the election a personal attack 
on Wanamaker was published as a political advertisement 
in New England and in the Middle West. Leading Demo- 
cratic newspapers of Boston and Chicago carried it. In 
New York it slipped only into the American, but inad- 
vertently, because it was noticed and withdrawn before the 
city edition went to press." The advertisment charged that 
the man who was paying for the series of page Republican 


“It had been handed in late Saturday night, and had been passed by mis- 
take. The American in a double-column editorial called the attack one of 
the “contemptible roorbacks that disgraced the last hours of the presidential 
campaign” and declared that “John Wanamaker shares with perhaps not 
more than a dozen others the rightful reputation of being one of America’s 
greatest citizens.” 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 397 


advertisements was John Wanamaker, and that he did it 
because: 

From 1898 to 1910 the House of Wanamaker withheld thousands of 
dollars in customs revenue. ‘Twelve years of deception in connection 
with shipments from the Wanamaker Paris office! On March 3, 1913, 
the day before President Wilson took office, John Wanamaker paid the 
Government $100,000 in settlement. Extreme haste marked the com- 
promise, Secretary MacVeagh and Collector Loeb exerting extraordinary 
efforts to close and hide the case. But Secretary McAdoo reopened the 
case. On June 16, 1914, Wanamaker confessed again and paid over 
another $100,000. In addition, Secretary McAdoo cleaned out the cus- 
toms service at Philadelphia, putting trusted men on guard. 


With his characteristic energy, despite the fact that the 
advertisement had been “withdrawn without any suggestion 
of Mr. Wanamaker or his friends,” Wanamaker published 
over his signature a refutation of the charges. He declared 
that “some one apparently having access to the government 
offices at Washington made up a story in the interest of the 
Democratic party, intending to smirch an unblemished 
record of over half a century as a merchant.” He went 
on to show how Wanamaker packages “went through the 
Custom House in the regular way and charges were paid 
whenever assessed,” and that it was a new interpretation of 
the law regarding sample packages that made it necessary 
for the house of Wanamaker, in common with all other 
importers, to pay an assessment for back dues on sample 
packages. In conclusion he declared: “I am willing to 
establish these facts in any court by books, witnesses, and 
the Custom House brokers who paid the duties when the 
goods were passed, and, failing to do so, I will forfeit 
$100,000 to be distributed to the hospitals and charities of 
New York and Philadelphia.” 

In the meantime Wanamaker conceived the idea of hav- 
ing a group of Republicans invite Roosevelt to make a key- 


398 JOHN WANAMAKER 


note campaign speech for Hughes in the last week of the 
campaign.. Wanamaker sent the following telegram on 


October 24, 1916: 


Dear CoLonEL RoosEvELtT: There is still much to be done to make 
sure the election of Mr. Hughes. ‘To some of your old friends in the 
West, whose signatures, representing many others of like mind, have been 
given to the accompanying telegraphic request, it seems as though you 
might crown your splendid work for Mr. Hughes by the soul cry of a 
true patriot from Cooper Union Friday night, Nov. 3rd, awakening the 
people to the crisis of the hour, like unto the speech of Abraham Lincoln, 
delivered on the same spot, which roused the people of the United States 
to put their seal upon him for the Presidency. The fight is becoming 
more tense daily and next Friday would be the psychological moment for 
your supreme effort for Hughes and the Republican and Progressive 
parties, for which every loyal American will rise up and call you blessed. 
Please wire. Your friend, 

JoHN WaNAMAKER. 


From Toledo on October 27 Roosevelt answered: 


It gives me great pleasure to accept your more than courteous invita- 
tion, and in accordance with your suggestion I appoint next Friday night 
November 3rd for the speech. Believe me, I appreciate your message 
and I desire to express through you my acknowledgment to your associates 
in the invitation. 


The Cooper Union meeting, on November 3, 1916, sealed 
the return of Theodore Roosevelt to the Republican party. 


* He telegraphed thirty prominent Republican business men, among them 
Shedd and Rosenwald of Chicago and others who had been mild Bull 
Moosers in 1912. All but two accepted. Choate asked for the text of the 
letter to Roosevelt, and then wired that he could not sign. Robert T. Lin- 
coln said that there were “circumstances that made it impossible for him to 
join in the invitation.” 

That it was Wanamaker’s intention to use the Cooper Union meeting for 
a great pre-election “moral awakening” is evident from a memorandum to 
the National Committee in which he suggested “services in all the churches 
in the United States on the Sunday following the Cooper Union meeting to 
adopt resolutions indorsing Mr. Hughes.” He had compiled a list of 
225,486 churches to whose pastors he thought a night letter should be sent 
immediately after the Cooper Union meeting. It was to be an appeal for 
prayer on Sunday “that the people might hear the voice of Lincoln calling 
upon a united country to fulfill her high destiny.” Such a telegram might 
have turned the election. 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 399 


The flower of Republicanism in the East was gathered there, 
Progressives mingling once more with the Old Guard. 
Using the desk and chair that Lincoln had used in 1861, 
John Wanamaker presided. In introducing the prodigal 
son, Wanamaker reminded the audience that Theodore 
Roosevelt, by the will of the American people, had occu- 
pied Lincoln’s high place as head of the American Republic, 
and that it was fitting for Roosevelt to sound the battle note 
for the nation and the party on the eve of the election. He 
said: 

“This old Cooper Union, where we are meeting, has been 
_a sanctuary since Abraham Lincoln, with prophetic vision, 
made the speech that has become immortal. That speech 
roused the nation. Republican doctrines and deeds rebuilt 
the nation in spite of the effort of Democratic doctrines and 
deeds to break it down. We refused then as we refuse now 
to take any middle ground or to trust to the don’t care 
Democrats. We have assembled as old soldiers, old citi- 
zens, and old patriots in a national camp fire previous to 
going into next week’s battle. Abraham Lincoln is not 
dead. His spirit goes marching on. He speaks to the 
sons of the patriots of 1861 now gathered here that they 
may take on a new impulse of patriotism for his sake and 
guard the country for which he perished. It is our convic- 
tion that no other presidential campaign in the history of the 
United States has presented graver issues or more far-reach- 
ing problems than does this. Not only is the domestic 
welfare of the nation profoundly to be affected by the result, 
but the honor and the very safety of the Republic are at 
stake.” 

The next evening, at Wilmington, Wanamaker delivered 
his final speech as a political campaigner. He denounced 
the Democratic slogan, “Peace and Prosperity,” as a “mis- 
leading advertisement, which the Democrats expect to pour, 


400 JOHN WANAMAKER 


like soothing syrup, down the throats of the American peo- 
ple to quiet any inquiry into the future. It is an affront 
and an insult to the intelligence and conscience of our 
citizenship. It is like unto Nero fiddling while Rome was 
burning.’ What he thought of the transcendent issue, 
which he believed to be America’s place in the world, can 
best be described in his peroration: 

“Interpreted pictorially this slogan of peace and pros- 
perity means and says to the rest of mankind that Uncle 
Sam has grown to be a fat, pudgy, happy gentleman, with 
a big paunch, a small head, and a smaller conscience. He 
is sitting in his easy chair, a big dinner in his stomach, a 
cigar in his mouth, about to fall asleep. Outside his home, 
with the din and lamentations of struggle easily heard 
through the open window, his neighbors are in sore conflict 
and distress. He turns his head. He looks. He sees. 
He closes his eyes. He is too proud to fight. THe is too 
fat to care. He is too contented to realize the truth. He 
has ‘peace and prosperity-—what else matters? 

“Ts this the Uncle Sam that we sometimes like to think 
is a composite of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln? Is 
this the Uncle Sam that the American people have so long 
cherished in their memories and hearts as their ideal? What 
has become of the real Uncle Sam? The tall, straight, 
lithe body of muscle, of nerve and bone, with no overpad- 
ding of fat. The fighting chin. The firm mouth. The 
clear eyes. The kindly smile. The Uncle Sam always on 
his feet, always on his job. Always ready for the emer- 
gency, always ready to help those in need. The Uncle 
Sam who is neighbor and friend to the world, never seeking 
a fight, but never shirking one; doing his duty at whatever 
personal sacrifice. 

‘“‘Are we content with our selfish brand of peace and pros- 


THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1916 4or1 


perity, or are we willing and prepared to take our place in 
the changing destinies of the world? 

“Shall Uncle Sam be lulled to sleep in the quiet before 
the storm? 

“Europe is going through fire that she may have a resur- 
rection into a higher life. She is going through fire of the 
flesh. America must go through fire of the soul. There 
is God’s work to be done by the United States. Are we con- 
tent to be at peace, and to live in prosperity at the sacrifice 
of humanity?” 


CHAPTER XXIX 
INS THE SERVICE (OF His ‘COUNTRY 


N the Civil War John Wanamaker was refused for mili- 
tary service and had to serve in a civilian capacity. 
When the Spanish-American War broke out, he telegraphed 
to the Secretary of War, offering to raise and equip a regi- 
ment from his store family, and to go with the regiment to 
the front. He was sixty years old in 1898, but he was keen 
to serve. We have seen how he spared no expense to give 
the young men in his employ the advantages of military 
training and had been doing so for a quarter of a century 
before the question of preparedness arose as a national issue 
when the European war was raging. No young men who 
went to the Mexican frontier in 1915 were better prepared 
than those who had been cadets of the John Wanamaker 
Commercial Institute in the Philadelphia and New York 
stores. There were enough of them for two companies, 
and, as during the Spanish-American War, they were car- 
ried at full pay in the stores for the entire period of their 
service under the colors. 

The re-election of President Wilson was a bitter disap- 
pointment to Wanamaker. In November, 1916, none could 
foresee that Germany would force us into the war by 
announcing the policy of unrestricted use of submarines, 
and Wanamaker had lost faith in the intention of Wilson 
to work constructively for peace while maintaining the sanc- 
tity of American lives on the high seas. Despite profound 
misgivings, due to the way the Republican campaign was 
conducted, he had counted upon the election of Hughes, 

402 


IN THE’ SERVICE OF HIS:COUNTRY 403 


and the private files reveal the fact that he had intended 
to lay before President-elect Hughes the suggestion that an 
“American Peace Commission” be assembled in a consulta- 
tive capacity. It was his idea that the Governor and one 
Senator from each state and one hundred men thoroughly 
representative of the American people should be invited to 
meet in Washington to formulate a constructive policy for 
the new administration. He was under no illusion as to the 
length of the war, and was too well informed to believe that 
the Entente Powers could be induced to agree to peace 
negotiations unless the United States stated definitely what 
obligations she was willing to assume and what stipulations 
she would place upon the Central Powers as the price of 
peace. He is on record as having declared on October 9, 
1916: “It will be two years more before the war closes.” 
The Christmas season of 1916 was the most prosperous 
that retail merchandising in America had ever known. War 
contracts and high wages were beginning to tell upon all 
classes of society, and the heavy demand for everything that 
the general store could supply, combined with the increasing 
difficulty of getting goods of Wanamaker quality, proved 
to be a severe strain upon Wanamaker, following the 
strenuous and unsuccessful presidential campaign. He was 
ordered to Florida, and obeyed his physician. He never 
admitted that he needed a rest, but he did see the reason- 
ableness of a change; and so it was that the rupture of diplo- 
matic relations with Germany, coming less than two weeks 
after Wilson’s “peace without victory” speech, found him 
far from his desk and the center of things. He telegraphed 
from Florida a statement to be published in the store adver- 
tisement on the morning of February 4, 1917, which he 
headed, “Americans, Rally Round the President!” In it 
he said that “the clock has struck the hour that requires 
loyalty to this nation and to the flag under which we have 


404, JOHN WANAMAKER 


lived as brothers.” Having been disappointed before, 
Wanamaker did not feel sure of Woodrow Wilson, but, 
as in the spring of 1916, the keynote he sounded was “hold- 
ing up the President’s hands.” To one who taxed him with 
inconsistency he wrote: “Every citizen’s duty is to demand 
leadership when it is not given, but to be ready to follow 
the leader if he does lead; and we must remember that 
the voice of the people has made Wilson our leader. If he 
becomes that, the past is wiped out.” 

This correct and just attitude Wanamaker unswervingly 
maintained. Our War President had no more enthusiastic 
and loyal supporter than the man who had not hesitated 
to excoriate him a few months earlier. It was hard for 
Wanamaker to remain on the house boat Osiris during Feb- 
ruary and March—possibly harder than anything else that 
had been demanded of him during his life. He said that 
for the first time he knew how Milton felt when he wrote, 
“They also serve who only stand and wait.” He had prom- 
ised to stay until Easter. Never before had he been away 
from Philadelphia when war was imminent. But he remem- 
bered that most of his contemporaries, who had lived 
through both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War 
and who had taken an active part in those conflicts, were 
dead. He connected his presence at Pass-a-Grille with the 
fact that he was not yet hors du combat. 

Knowing that if he thought about the war he would go 
home willy-nilly, before the treacherous March winds were 
safely over that always gave him a bad cold, he concen- 
trated upon his business, and wrote a series of memoranda 
for its improvement—memoranda which contained the 
frank confession that his stores might easily slip behind 
unless the mind and will of all his associates—his own mind 
and will, too—concentrated upon “preparing the Wana- 
maker ship to sail in accordance with the new rules of navi- 


IN| DHE SERVICE OR HIS COUNDRY 7405 


gation.” He asked himself: “What are these rules? Shall 
we hunt for them? Shall we guess what they will be? 
No, we shall study conditions and make the rules.” He 


declared: 


After the war ends, war contracts will cease and war prices will be 
lowered. ‘The prosperity boom will therefore largely collapse unless we 
make preparations to safeguard the natural prosperity of our country. 
With war contracts closed and temporary prosperity gone, there must 
come a slackening in business because of a curtailment of incomes and 
readjustment of wages and prices. With the world at peace, America 
must meet competitive prices and wages. 


We found these reflections jotted down on the backs of 
envelopes and along the margins of newspapers. They 
ended with the thought: “Ships get barnacles—all ships 
do—ours has them.” Then followed a list of the “barna- 
cles.” The last comment was: “Off with the barnacles!” 

And then he was flying northward, the Philadelphia 
weather embargo lifted, to re-enlist in his country’s service. 

The President’s proclamation met the following response, 
telegraphed to Washington early on Monday morning, 
April 16, 1917: 


Mr. PREsIDENT: 


Your message of Sunday met me this morning. I make free as a mer- 
chant to write this with great thankfulness for your inspired national 
appeal. My first thought after reading it was that it added another chap- 
ter to Solomon’s Book of Proverbs. 

Not only has the supreme test of the nation arrived, but the supreme 
test of each individual has come. All of us who live under our Flag 
are Americans above everything else. Politics have nothing to do with 
the present situation. Your proclamation makes Democrats of us all. 
For our Country’s sake we are patriots above parties or creeds. 

This is God’s country, and its coins are so stamped; and the heart of 
every citizen, native-born or aaopted, throbs with pride for our Presi- 
dent’s wisdom, and responds to your call. 

Representing the people in our business in two cities, to each of whom 
your proclamation has been read aloud to-day in special meetings, and 


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IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY 407 


which forces include over twelve hundred for many years under military 
training within the stores, we accept your ideal of a merchant’s duty; 
and whatever power of usefulness we have by association and command 
of markets, we place not only our business institutions, but ourselves, as 
a unit, for any and every service which will aid you to carry out your 
plans at this momentous hour. 

We rededicate to our country afresh all the forces and resources we 
have for service in any direction, personally, corporately, and collectively, 
for which we are qualified. The words that you have written to the 
people in the proclamation stand abreast of anything written or spoken by 
George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. 


? 


To “speak, act, and serve together,” and for our country’s sake, we 


pledge ourselves to our utmost capacity. 


On the same day he issued “to the Head of each Section, 
including Workrooms, Factories and Warehouses,” the fol- 
lowing order: 


Please notify the people employed in your Section to assemble within 
fifteen minutes after the store closes at a point you shall select, in your 
Section or outside of it within the store, and read to them the President’s 
Proclamation, in print to-day, of which a copy will be in your hands to 
give to each of your employees, if you will notify Mr. Brewer of the 
number required, and also a copy of the telegram that I am sending to 
the President to-day, for their own scrap books, as a part of the history of 
the times. 


To sound the keynote of the Wanamaker spirit under the 
new conditions facing the country he published at the head 
of the store advertisement in both cities: 


WHAT WILL BUSINESS DO 
WITH OUR NATION PLUNGED IN WAR? 


What would great-souled Stephen Girard or Robert Morris or Jay 
Cooke have first thought of in a time like this? 
Would one of these men have said: 
“How is this going to affect my business?” 
Brothers! Cannot we hear their voices coming down the years, and 
their sure and steady declaration: 


408 JOHN WANAMAKER 


“Tt is not a question of how the war will affect my business, but of 
how my business may best serve my country at such a time.” 

The best way we can serve our country, after having sent more than 
200 of our young men into the army, is to provide a sure method for the 
people at home to get the things they need at fair prices, unaffected by 
war profiteering. 

We shall not reduce our forces nor our conveniences, nor our adver- 
tising, nor our service, nor our liberalities—rather we shall increase them 
as occasion affords opportunity. 

If there is waste in any direction we shall cut it out like the cancer 
that it is. 

But we shall take away no work from any of our good and deserving 
people nor rights from any of our customers. 

So much for a store that blazes its own trail. 


There was never a time that Wanamaker enjoyed more 
thoroughly writing the little “editorials” that prefaced the 
day’s advertisement. They reflected the universal spirit of 
the American people, and give a remarkably accurate picture 
of what “the man in the street” was thinking as he read 
day after day the developments and new events that 
attended the entry of the United States into the World 
War. Picked at random, we give: 


ALL HANDS ON DECK 


A passenger on an ocean steamship recently arriving said: “The pas- 
sengers had a hurry call and were on deck inside of two minutes, because 
a periscope was in sight.” 

Not for the sound of drums or martial music, but because of the 
intensive spirit that is in the faces and voices of American citizens and 
the rallying forces around Roosevelt, tending toward a Roosevelt Army 
of a half million to go off without delay under the orders of the Presi- 
dent and the Secretary of War. 

There is something stirring in the American heart, such as filled it 
when the first shot at Lexington went around the world. 

Thoughtful and anxious people believe that the future of the world 
is now depending on the fate of France. She must not be left alone to 
fight her own way. 

It is the fate of the world that is in the balance. 


IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY 409 


Delirious days crowded one upon another. Rarely has 
a man approaching his eightieth birthday found himself the 
center of a host of feverish activities, and called upon to put 
back the hands of the clock, to deny his fourscore years, to 
carry burdens that would have taxed any ordinary man 
in the full prime of life. America’s entrance into the 
World War, possibly because it had been so long delayed, 
unloosed torrents of enthusiasm, devotion, and energy. 
Everybody’s social and business life was affected. Normal 
relations were temporarily—but radically—changed. There 
was no organization or institution of any kind that did not 
get into war service. Only when we consider the complex- 
ity and multitude of John Wanamaker’s interests, and how 
he had kept active control of all of them, do we realize 
what the man’s life was during the two years following 
April 6, 1917." 

Several hundred in the Wanamaker store family belonged 
to the National Guard and two hundred of them had spent 
nearly a year under the colors on the Mexican frontier. 
These, with other volunteers, had to leave work immedi- 
ately. When the draft went into effect John Wanamaker 
found the number of his people in the service increased to 
over a thousand. Then came the auxiliary services, calling 
for women as well as men. To them all he bade a personal 
Godspeed and made their going the occasion of patriotic 
demonstrations in the stores. At Bethany, as in the stores, 
young men who looked to him as their chief went out by the 
hundreds, and increased greatly the number of those with 


* For instance, to the delegates of the Pennsylvania State Sunday School 
Association (of which he was president) at Pittsburgh in the fall of 1917, 
he wrote: “Let us go out quickly and all together for reinforcements. 
Count on me to do whatever the convention calls for. We need in our 
Sunday-school work younger people who must take the places of their older 
brothers and sisters who have gone to the front as soldiers, sailors, and 
nurses,” 


410 JOHN WANAMAKER 


whom he determined to keep in touch in the American camps 
and in France. 

In the stores the Red Cross and the Red, White and Blue 
Cross, quintupled their services and activities. The fifteen 
thousand members of the store families in Philadelphia and 
New York contributed to the various funds that were raised; 
the boy and girl cadets intensified their drills and band work 
and their aid in the collection of funds; and there were 
never-to-be-forgotten occasions, such as the visit of Joffre 
and Viviani, and of other missions, following the French 
precedent, to review the cadets at the stores. 

The many problems arising from the necessity of read- 
justing merchandising policies and the machinery of the 
stores to meet war conditions increased through 1917 and 
1918, and continued to demand the very best that was in 
John Wanamaker until long after the Armistice. He 
refused to delegate to others the conduct of the activities 
of the Bethany organizations; and he stimulated the spirit 
of giving seven days of the week. Nor did he refuse to 
listen to the appeals for his guidance and inspiration that 
came from church and civic organizations in which he had 
always been prominent. We shall not attempt to enumerate 
the activities he helped to direct. 

In June, Wanamaker records so much time given to the 
Red Cross and the war loan that the reader who had no 
other evidence to go by would conclude that he had given 
up business. He speaks almost every day of “Red Cross 
matters” and “Liberty Loan subscriptions.” At the end of 
the month (June 30, 1917) he wrote: 


The urgencies of subscribing to Liberty Bonds and Red Cross needs 
have been upon us all the time and kept us busy trying to get everybody 
to help. I am on the four-horse coach and driving hard and trying to get 
everybody to pull with me. The war work goes on merrily—America 
does care to do her part! 


IN, Po oenv er OnvHITS COUNTRY iar 


Memories of his youth were evoked by the arrival in 
Philadelphia of the boys for the great army that was being 
raised all over the country. He speaks of them as “such a 
homesick set from every State in the Union,” and says that 
there were “twenty thousand of them at the Navy Yard.” 
In July, on the old Bader farm which he owned, near 
Washington Lane, over which the Revolutionary troops 
marched to Valley Forge, he established Camp John Wana- 
_ maker, and in July it was the home of “the 2nd Regiment 
of Artillery, 1,200 strong, under Major Greble.” To this 
camp he gave a library before the American Library Asso- 
ciation entered into war service, and he anticipated the 
Young Men’s Christian Association and the Knights of Col- 
umbus in his “entertainment hut.” On July 18, he wrote: 


The whole aspect of Philadelphia is changed by the bands recruiting. 
There is war spirit everywhere. It is more rampant and exciting in our 
cities than ever. Bethany Brotherhood is turned over to the soldiers 
and sailors with 100 cots in it. When the chaps have nights off they 
pay 20 cts. for bed, and § cts. for soap and towel, so they can use the 
swimming pool. 


Wanamaker’s greatest service, however, was directing the 
Liberty Loan campaigns, into which he entered heart and 
soul. His advertisements, his speeches, and above all his 
own example—he gave “until it hurt”’—contributed pow- 
_erfully to the success of all the government loans. It was 
like Wanamaker to be the one that fired the opening gun 
on the day the campaign for the first loan was launched 
and to be sitting in his office, check book before him, ready 
to make up any deficiency that there might be in the Phila- 
delphia quota on the late afternoon of the last day of the 
drive for the Victory Loan after the war was over. He 
stuck right to it, educating the people to give, urging them 
to make sacrifices, defending the wisdom of the loans, and 
stoutly maintaining that no investor who held on to govern- 


412 JOHN WANAMAKER 


ment bonds would lose one cent of principal or interest, 
when others had grown lukewarm or skeptical or frightened. 

Wanamaker’s attitude toward the loan drives was suc- 
cinctly expressed in an address to his Philadelphia store 
family on June 25, 1917, when he said: 

“Tt is not that we wanted to get into this war, but by force 
of circumstances and the Providence of God, we have been 
compelled to take a place in it; and we are in it to stay. 
Money is the smallest thing that we can give.” 

He did not object to great preparations and greater 
expenditures. He approved of the policy adopted at Wash- 
ington to mobilize speedily the industrial forces of the coun- 
try, and to place orders for everything that might be needed 
for an army of millions of men. The argument for haste 
and magnitude he had put in an editorial on May 17, in 
which he said: 


The quicker and more complete, and even colossal preparation that 
America makes, the more convincing effect upon others of our ability to 
meet any emergency; and the sooner the European world understands 
this the better. Remember still more, that the sooner the power of the 
United States is felt as a fact, the quicker we shall bring about an end to 
it all over there. 


On June 15, 1917, after the books closed for the first 
Liberty Loan, Wanamaker received the following telegram 


from the New York Herald: 


Congratulations on splendid strength and advertising support you gave 
to Liberty Loan. Yours was far best advertising for Liberty Loan that 
has been done. We consider wonderful outpouring of New York money 
in past twenty-four hours, due to your advertising. That both you and 
your son Rodman each subscribed one million dollars is one more proof 
to justly bestowed title of America’s greatest merchant. Your long record 
of public service as a private citizen is not equaled by any other man. 


Wanamaker served on the central committee for the 
second loan in the autumn of 1917, and for the third loan 


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IN, CHE SERVICE, OBR /HIS*COUNTRY, 413 


in the spring of 1918. During the third campaign he 
announced that he would put the gross total receipts of 
the sales in the Wanamaker stores for five days into bonds. 
On May 26, 1918, when the books for the third loan closed, 
he was able to announce that the receipts thus converted 
into bonds, plus personal subscriptions of himself, his son 
Rodman, and the store employees, made a total of $4,916,- 
517. This was the record for the stores only. But John 
Wanamaker’s influence extended wherever New York and 
Philadelphia newspapers were read, and the campaign in 
the stores was not directed solely at the employees, but also 
at all who came in. Wanamaker never offered any apology 
for doing this. He did not consider that he was putting 
undue pressure upon employees or that he was breaking a 
business principle of sixty years by importuning people who 
came into his stores. There were those who remonstrated, 
even among his own associates. He answered them, “This 
is a business which is a common enterprise of all Americans, 
and we must see it through. A foreigner might resent being 
asked to buy bonds—but not an American. We must all get 
after one another if we are going to win this war.” 

The national character of the services rendered by the 
great merchant in this third campaign is recognized in a 
letter from Governor Passmore on June 9, 1918: 

In closing up the work of the Third Liberty Loan Campaign, I am 
writing you on behalf of the Officers and Directors of the Federal 
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, as well as of the Liberty Loan Commit- 
tees, to express our deep appreciation of the great assistance you in so 
many ways rendered in the satisfactory accomplishment of our under- 
taking. Your very generous help throughout the campaign was a splendid 


offering from you to the nation in the work of financing the war, in the 
successful termination of which we are all so deeply interested. 


On October 5, 1918, Wanamaker took a whole page in 
the New York and Philadelphia newspapers to plead for 
the fourth loan, in which he declared that “although the war 


414 JOHN WANAMAKER 


is practically won, this loan must be subscribed and oversub- 
scribed.” His reasoning was cogent. The government had 
put forth a stupendous effort. We had gone ahead, as we 
should have done, without counting the cost, and now at 
the moment of victory, if the government were embar- 
rassed for want of funds, everything might be lost. Because 
some of his friends had predicted failure for the new loan 
and were saying that its flotation would lower the market 
price of all the previous loans, John Wanamaker made 
the effort of his life, and his son was in complete accord 
with him. He and Rodman Wanamaker each subscribed 
$3,500,000, and the two store families reached nearly 
$6,000,000. Ina public statement Wanamaker announced 
that the stores and their owners had subscribed $12,773,000 
to the Fourth Liberty Loan. Later subscriptions brought 
the total to $15,000,000. John Wanamaker said: “The 
savings of my lifetime are in my businesses, and as far as 
possible I have put them at the disposal of the government, 
just as many of our own people have done with their own 
savings.” 

Just before the end of the campaign for the fourth loan 
Wanamaker took another full page. He reproduced a car- 
toon of Thomas Nast, used in the Civil War, with a fort 
and a soldier on guard in the foreground, looking across the 
Potomac to the Capitol in the background. This was called, 
“Fold the Fort.” In his plea Wanamaker stated that “with 
the change of but one word, the song of my personal friend, 
P. P. Bliss, fits to this very day.” He reprinted the Gospel 
Hymn and begged that it be sung “in town and country, 
hamlet and crossroads.” The plea called attention to the 
sacrifice the soldiers were making and mentioned the names 
of the battles in which they were engaged. He ended up: 


The writer is saying to himself—what is money in comparison with 
the duty that conscience and the country call upon us for in this crisis? 


IN THESSERVICE ORV HIS; COUNTRY 415 


What is the worth of anything we have—grounds and buildings, stocks 
and bonds, and bank deposits—if our country is allowed to fail at home 
or abroad in this extremity? 


When the fifth call came Wanamaker was in Florida. 
But he returned in time to take personal charge of the 
advertising campaign for the fifth drive. On May 12, 
1919, he announced that over twelve hundred Wanamaker 
employees had subscribed $11,915,000, making “the total 
to the five war loans of $39,289,550.” 

The aftermath of these loans was not particularly Hey 
for any one. Most Americans, including our richest men, 
subscribed for more bonds than they could possibly carry. 
Paying in installments became a great hardship if not an 
impossibility, and there were thousands who had to sell 
bonds at considerably below par because they had urgent 
need for the money. To tie up all one’s savings in an 
investment at low interest, which has to be held to come 
out without loss, is not good business. But Wanamaker 
never pretended that it was good business. He did not sub- 
scribe to the successive loans as a business investment, nor 
did he solicit subscriptions on this basis. He had grasped 
from the very first moment the significance of the loans 
and their vital importance. He knew that the government 
had to have available the funds that could come only from 
the people of the country pledging their credit. Very often, 
in the course of the drives, he used the expression “war 
measure.” 

But after it was all over, he continued to affirm that while 
the loans were not a profitable investment, they were a safe 
investment. When he found that some of his employees, 
who had a legitimate need for ready money, would have to 
sell their bonds at a loss, and felt that their chief had been 
wrong in assuring them of the soundness of the investment, 
Wanamaker did not hesitate a minute. He issued an order 


416 JOHN WANAMAKER 


that in such cases employees who had subscribed to bonds 
in the drives through the stores could take them to the 
cashier’s office and get one hundred cents on the dollar. 
John Wanamaker himself, with all his wealth, was not able 
to carry the $20,000,000 he had subscribed for personally, 
or had ordered bought for the firm. It was too large a 
sum; and at the very time he was buying in at par bonds of 
his employees, he was relinquishing large quantities of the 
same issues at a very great loss. He did not regard the loss 
as a business loss, but as a contribution gladly made to enable 
his country to triumph over her enemies. That was how 
he put it. He had no regrets and he was impatient with 
those who had. A man was once holding forth in his pres- 
ence on how the country went mad over war-loan drives. 
“And blessed madness it was,” interrupted Wanamaker, 
“for which we have every reason to be proud. When our 
boys were giving their lives, it was the least that we could 
do to give our money.” 

The subscriptions to Liberty bonds meant lending money, 
not giving it. In all his appeals to the public, to his store 
families, and to his Bethany people, Wanamaker always 
made that perfectly clear. Putting savings in Liberty bonds 
was an act of faith; setting aside a portion of earnings to pay 
for installments on subscriptions was an act of loyalty. It 
involved self-denial, but in the long run was to the advan- 
tage of the subscriber. It took away the temptation to keep 
up the orgy of spending that had been the phenomenon of 
1916. At the best, falling in line and taking the quota 
suggested by those in the management of the loan drives 
was an inconvenience; it could not be called a sacrifice. The 
country at war demanded still more. Every citizen was 
called upon to give, according to his means, for the support 
of the Red Cross and other relief organizations, and to make 
possible the welfare work of the Young Men’s Christian 


ING BRO RVICE AOR HIsi COUNTRY a9 


Association, Young Women’s Christian Association, Knights 
of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, and Salvation Army 
among the troops at home and abroad.’ 

In Philadelphia Wanamaker gave the use of University 
Hall for American Red Cross headquarters to be “‘used as 
the place of rendezvous and public workroom of the women 
of Philadelphia who can spare time to assist in getting ready 
the things wanted for the army and navy at home and over- 
seas.” From the minutes of the Red, White and Blue 
Cross, it appears that in the first month of the war this 
organization raised $5,000 in the Philadelphia store alone 
for the National Red Cross. All the employees of John 
Wanamaker were organized into units for military and 
physical training, rifle practice, first aid and hospital nursing, 
officers’ training, preparation of supplies for soldiers and 
hospitals, dietetic and food conservation classes, and the 
erowing of foodstuffs. The use of the Grand Court and 
the great organ were given for concerts to raise additional 
funds for specific causes approved by the head of the busi- 
ness. Wanamaker could rightly boast that his store fam- 
ily was participating in every form of war activity and 
formed “a cross section of national war effort.” 

In 1917 Wanamaker announced the opening of a “mili- 
tary service bureau,” with the promise, “We’ll get your 
Christmas gift to your soldier.” Orders were cabled and 
filled by the Paris and London houses. This service met 
with such popular response that it was continued through 
1918, and thousands of orders were taken daily. But while 
facilities were accorded for serving the American Expedi- 
tionary Force, it was found necessary, as the war continued, 


* While the first Liberty Loan drive was on, the employees of John Wana- 
maker were asked for $6,000 in one day for the Ice Ambulance Fund— 
and they gave it! In the appeal, Wanamaker said: “Be a philanthropist for 
one day and have the feeling in your heart that you are giving something 
by setting aside a day’s wages for the old flag and for our boys who are 
defending it.” 


418 JOHN WANAMAKER 


to curtail—and in some particulars suspend—the services to 
customers in which John Wanamaker had been a pioneer. 
Customers were asked to carry packages whenever possible, 
and in many lines of merchandise the return privilege had 
to be withdrawn. Wanamaker wagons could no longer call 
for goods to be exchanged. It was explained that all this 
was due to lack of trained personnel and to the imperative 
necessity of cutting down on unnecessary labor. 

In January, 1918, when a coal famine threatened, he 
led the way in co-operating with the government by cutting 
the store day to six and a half hours, opening at ten o’clock 
and closing at four-thirty. These shorter hours were after- 
wards reintroduced in the summer of 1918 “‘to relieve over- 
crowded street cars, thus leaving means of transportation 
free for the increasing army of war workers in factories.” 
For several weeks in midwinter, he joined with other retail 
merchants in acceding to the request of the government to 
keep the stores closed all day Monday to save coal. In his 
restaurants, famed for the quality of their bread and pas- 
tries, he cut the wheat content down to twenty-five per cent 
—and in cakes to zero—in order to save wheat. 

But he felt that he could help in a still more practical 
way “to back up the President of the United States and 
the War Councils of Defense and Conservation, who are 
putting up bars against a further advance of prices of 
food, iron, copper, and various other commodities.” He 
announced that “fas owners of the largest stock of dry goods 
and housekeeping wares and articles that we have had in 
forty years, we have concluded that it is our duty a3 mer- 
chants now to take a part in assisting the policy of the gov- 
ernment to hold down prices.” Followed the announcement 
of a “different kind of sale for one week” in October, 1917. 
Although his business was increasing more rapidly than ever 
before, Wanamaker announced that he had decided to offer 





JoHN WANAMAKER AND GENERAL PERSHING 


(In Independence Square, Philadelphia, on September 12th, 1919, at the spot 
where General Pershing planted the tree which is shown between him and Mr. 
Wanamaker) 





IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY 419 


$1,000,000 worth of merchandise at a drastic discount 
“wholly in the interests of the public and with a conscious- 
ness that there are many things now on hand which, in 
some instances, if sold cannot be replaced at the present 
prices. . . . We are offering an entire Million Dollars’ 
worth of goods, carefully repriced. Never since the days of 
the Civil War has any such offering been made by a retail 
establishment.” * 

At no time during his life was Wanamaker a more 
prolific and forceful writer than during the years of his 
country’s participation in the World War and the Peace 
Conference. Just as his stores and his church and Sunday 
school were representative of the activities of the entire 
United States, his editorials and speeches reflected the psy- 
chology of the American nation. He was the typical Amer- 
ican, strong, tender, at times passionate in the intensity and 
bitterness of his feeling, fanatical in his belief that the war 
was a crusade, unconsciously anxious to atone to the Allies 
for our late entry into the war, nervous about subversive 
influences in the life of the nation, believing for a time that 
the retributive element in justice needed to be stressed and 
later yielding in his thinking about the problems of peace to 
the dictates of common sense. Having passed through the 
period of approving—against his better judgment—the vin- 
dictive announcements of fire-eaters, he came more quickly 
than most of his contemporaries to the frank opinion that 
constructive peace demanded letting bygones be bygones. 
His distrust of panaceas kept him from being swept off 
his feet by the League of Nations propaganda; and the big, 
broad life he had led made him realize that keeping alive 
hatred and suspicion of enemies was a manifestation of fear 
or shallow-mindedness. 

But even when public opinion was blowing hot and cold 


* See below, p. 431. 


4.20 JOHN WANAMAKER 


before we entered the war, when the country was bewildered 
and hesitated in getting the right start toward the proper 
concentration of every form of effort and energy for win- 
ning the war, and later when there were many who thought 
the war was over before the victory was won, John Wana- 
maker’s public utterances showed him to be a constructive 
thinker, wise beyond his fellows, and gifted with prophetic 
vision. He announced that “there should be unity of belief 
in the ability and war plans of the President and his 
hard-worked Cabinet, and the unquestioned support of the 
Congress without bickerings and backslappings of party 
newspapers or political organizations,” and that “the imper- 
atively essential thing is the ready money, absolutely neces- 
sary to meet promptly the unavoidable expenses of the 
United States Government.” He preached consistently the 
duty of solidarity among Allies, and the visits of the French, 
Belgian, and Italian missions during the war gave him the 
opportunity to drive home in editorials and addresses the 
fact that the United States was not fighting a separate war. 
He did not like the word “associates,” and, not being a 
diplomat or a historian, he refused to use it. To him we 
had only allies—and they remained allies after the fighting 
was over. 

In 1918 he became one of the directors of the War Wel- 
fare Council, and took an active part in the May “War 
Chest” campaign. He had indorsed from the very first 
the suggestion that the six great national organizations 
engaged in welfare work should pool their efforts in solicit- 
ing funds. This was not only good business, he said, but 
was a beautiful symbol of national religious solidarity in the 
face of the enemy. To bigots who wrote to him that one 
or the other of the welfare organizations was getting more 
than its share “in proportion to the source of the contribu- 
tions,” he replied that it was immaterial who gave the 


INS dae RVICE OR TAS COUNTRY) 4o1 


money. It was the gift of the American people to the 
American soldiers. Although he had a partiality for the 
Salvation Army, which he did not conceal, he was in har- 
mony with the other members of the Council in their policy 
of apportioning the War Chest funds strictly in accordance 
with the actual work the organizations were doing and the 
field they were covering at home and abroad." 

At the beginning of the second year of our participation 
he told the Carlisle Chamber of Commerce that “we must 
give all that we have. It is not possible to bankrupt the 
United States. There is a providential solemnity in the 
fact that it rests upon the rich, great, and powerful United 
States to win this war.” And scarcely six weeks before the 
Armistice he gave as a reason for “oversubscribing” the 
Fourth Liberty Loan: 


That the world may be stirred afresh to a sense of the full and firm 
purpose of the United States that the war is not to stop until thoroughly 
and permanently fought out to a complete victory. 


It was at this time that the American Expeditionary Force 
had succeeding in putting regiments into the thick of the 
offensive all along the line, and reports of casualties were 
pouring in from Flanders to Alsace. Men from both stores * 
and from Bethany were giving up their lives, and a member 
of the Wanamaker family had fallen.* But these sacrifices, 
he kept repeating, “bring to our minds each day what Lin- 
coln said on the battlefield of Gettysburg.” 

In the closing days of the war, John Wanamaker became 


“He retained membership on the Council after the war, and a copy of 
the audit for 1920, with his comments, is in the private files. 

* On November 18, 1921, Wanamaker wrote to a friend: “Both our stores 
sent lots of men, 1,490 to be exact, and 17 from this store died on the field 
of battle. Their names are inscribed on the Gold Star in the Court. Prob- 
ably as many from the New York store were killed.” 

* His nephew, Lieutenant Thomas Brown Wanamaker Fales, was killed 
while carrying back his captain from No Man’s Land, July 31, 1918, in the 
Battle of the Ourcq. Lieutenant Fales was in Company M of the rogth 
Infantry. 


422 JOHN WANAMAKER 


deeply interested in the Mid-European Union whose object 
was “to establish a continuous barrier of free, co-operating, 
democratic nations against imperialistic aggression from the 
Baltic to the Mediterranean as a Bulwark of Freedom 
for the world.” Its slogan, “co-operation, not coercion,” 
appealed to Wanamaker; and he had the deepest admiration 
for its president, the Czech professor, Thomas G. Masaryk. 
On October 26, 1918, Wanamaker took a prominent part in 
the ceremony of signing the “declaration of common aims” 
by representatives of twelve subject nations in the room in 
Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence 
was signed. ‘This was called—and turned out to be—the 
“death-warrant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” Wana- 
maker gave the chairs used by the signers, and afterward 
presented an American flag to the Union at a dinner in the 
Red Room of the Bellevue-Stratford. Turning to Masa- 
ryk, he said: 

“My dear brother and friend, we are here to talk to you 
heart to heart. None will ever forget the wonderful gath- 
ering of the people who came over here to live with us, 
and to whom America is the adopted country, but who 
remain attached to those lands now about to be freed from 
the oppressor. I laughed and I cried with them. I remem- 
ber looking into the face of an old woman. There were 
tears running down her cheeks, because the day had come 
which she had been waiting for all her life. You have 
walked over the same ground that Washington and Frank- 
lin and Jefferson walked over. Your footsteps followed 
theirs to-day, and what you have done will be written in the 
history of the world. This country and this country’s peo- 
ple are back of you in your signing of your Declaration of 
Independence.” 

In his war speeches President Wilson put in the fore- 
ground the kind of peace America was fighting for. Senti- 


IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY 423 


mentally the people applauded. Fighting for righteous- 
ness, for “making the world safe for democracy” and, “a 
better place to live in,” furnished the momentum and 
aroused the enthusiasm necessary to call forth sacrifice and 
_ devotion and to carry the effort through to a successful end. 
But few Americans had looked ahead. The question of a 
constructive peace, what it should be and how it should be 
made, despite the President’s utterances, entered very little 
into the thinking of Americans, even of those who, like 
Wanamaker, had been so interested in the re-establishment 
of peace in the earlier years of the war. Naturally the 
objects of the war were viewed differently after we became 
a party to the struggle. We lost our vantage point of aca- 
demic detachment. Almost without being aware of it, the 
United States changed from its earlier position of potential 
arbiter to that of one of the plaintiffs. When the defeated 
nations sued for peace, the victors, in no judicial frame of 
mind, became judges. 

On January 1, 1919, Wanamaker wrote concerning Wil- 
son’s trip to Paris: 


No surrender, no compromise, no half measures—this is the speech 
of the plain people everywhere throughout the United States these days. 
It is heard in the hotels, on the street corners, and in railroad trains as 
one travels about. 


Three months later, on April 1, his editorial said: 


In his personality is incarnated an almost incomprehensible truth. 
The President represents the belief of hundreds of thousands of men 
of both hemispheres, not in detail, but in principle, that wars of sword 
and gun and battleships shall forever cease. 

It is a man-and-nation saviour the world is looking for to-day. 

Whatever others think, the President: has no misgivings of the central 
fact of his mission. He has gone to respond to a summons that was to 
him as powerful and as irresistible as the star that shone over Bethlehem 
was to the Wise Men of the East. 


424 JOHN WANAMAKER 


And he commented upon the presentation of the first 
draft of the treaty to the Germans in May: 


The darkest day that America ever knew was that of April 15, 1865, 
when President Lincoln died by assassination. ‘The nearest approach to 
such a day was that of the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, 
four years ago, by the warship of an enemy, who thereby forced us into 
the world-wide war. No other day since Lincoln’s time was so full of 
tears and sorrow. 

On the anniversary day of the Lusitania horror, the German envoys at 
the Trianon Palace at Versailles, where the peace delegates assembled, 
confessed responsibility for Germany’s acts, and the propositions of a 
peace treaty were placed in their hands by Premier Clemenceau. 


And after the Treaty of Versailles was signed he wrote: 


The twenty-eighth of June, for all time, will be spelled with stars 
the globe round. It marks a great patriotic deed, nobly done, which must 
now be woven into the warp and woof of the life of every true American, 


A few days later came his eighty-first birthday, on 
July 11, 1919. In his acknowledgment of the greetings of 
friends, he said, “I am thankful to be alive in these won- 
derful days of the new birthday of our nation.” His first 
reaction to the peace was thankfulness that it had been con- 
cluded and blanket approval of what Woodrow Wilson had 
accomplished in Paris. He was riding on the wave of great 
enthusiasm at the time, welcoming home employees and 
friends, and greeting guests of the nation, Cardinal Mercier, 
King Albert and Queen Elizabeth, Marshal Foch, General 
Pershing, and General Diaz. There were neither time nor 
inclination to examine the peace that the Senate was asked 
to ratify, or to give serious consideration to the proposal 
that we should underwrite the treaty by entering the League 
of Nations without reservations. But when he came to read 
Senator Knox’s speech and to talk with him, he promptly 
modified what he had said on the spur of the moment. He 
had a deep respect for Knox’s opinion, and saw the justice 


‘ = * It qa ¢ 1 r ‘ 
6161 SHIZI WAANALAAS VIHdTAGV UH AYOLS YWANVNVNV A aH] LV ONIHSUA f TVUYANAL) 








IN TERE RVICEYORVEIS (COUNTRY. 425 


of the Pennsylvania Senator’s keen and searching analysis 
of the work of the Paris Conference. . So we find him writ- 
ing on November 14: 


Neither for temporary pride nor party, nor for human friendship, 
should we gamble away at Washington any part of the Constitution of the 
United States or the Declaration of Independence. We must hold stead- 
fastly to the foundations the nation was built upon by Washington, 
Jefferson, Franklin, Hancock and Hamilton. A hurried half-done piece 
of work only adds to our discontent, and puts off further the unity of the 
world and the settlement of the labor and financial questions now so 
disturbing. 


More than a year later, after Harding’s victory, he wrote: 


The United States, in putting an end to an evil war, can never consent 
to any diplomacy that will plant the seeds of another war. 


In 1921 he gave his name to the appeal of President 
Harding to call a conference for the limitation of arma- 
ments, and so far had he traveled from the spirit of 1918 
and 1919 that he said to the Pennsylvania State Sabbath 
School Convention on October 12, 1921: 

“We are deeply concerned that no mistake should be 
made by the United States in reaching conclusions as to the 
disarmament of nations. We desire respectfully to go upon 
record that war cannot end so long as we provide battleships, 
cannon, powder, and shot, and maintain standing armies. 
We believe that Christian patriotism and justice are capable 
of forming permanent high courts of peace and arbitration 
to meet any and all conditions and differences that may arise 
throughout the world. To this end we appeal to the 
churches of all and every denomination to unite heartily 
and organize actively for the purpose of opposing all poli- 
cies that do not mean for every nation the total disarma- 
ment of all armies and nations. The idea of war must of 
itself, in time, take its place among the crimes of the world.” 

His Armistice editorial announced that the stores would 


426 JOHN WANAMAKER 


be closed all day because of the great service at the Arling- 
ton National Cemetery, and he dared to say: 


That 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 will be 
remembered as one of the great hours of the world’s history. While it 
was reported the world over as a humiliation to the Germans, it was 
certainly a wise and courageous confession for them to make, that they 
had ceased to fight for a fruitless cause, that they were tired of the war, 
and would go no further. Was it not Queen Louise who, after the 
Battle of Jena, went with a rose in her hand to plead with Napoleon 
to stop the war? Would that there might be a complete disarmament 
of armies and navies in every country and that the world might hold 
soldiers of peace only! Would that the grave of the unknown hero, 
around which the President and a distinguished host will to-day be stand- 
ing, might be the last of the graves of unknown soldiers! 


This statement brought a number of letters from super- 
patriots, who did not grasp the fact that an old man, nearing 
the end of life, was beginning to see face to face. To his 
critics he answered in a spirit of forbearance, repeating the 
message he had sent the year before to the World Sunday 
School Convention in Tokyo: 


Many of us in the Western world believe that the clock of destiny is 
striking the hour of opportunity for all the nations to take an advance 
stand in the arts of peace, good will, and good fellowship, and work 
for the betterment of the people. To see something good in one another 
and to help develop it will strengthen and broaden the nations. 


A boilingly indignant and hysterical letter from a promi- 
nent Philadelphia woman received this answer: 


The war being over, I shall not be one to keep up the hatreds that it 
engendered (especially when President Harding is making such a sin- 
cere effort to bring about disarmament and a sentiment for peace among 
all the nations of the earth) any more than I would try to keep alive 
the passions of our own Civil War. 


A lion of strength and determination while the fighting 


(LHOIY 
rTATW ‘ = r 
SIVNIGUVD) AHL NO SI YANVNVNVA\ NHO[) 6161 “HLQZ UAMWALAAS “UAIONAJ\] IVNIGUVD SALVUAGISA(] OL NOILdIIAY 








IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY 427 


was on, John Wanamaker in the closing days of his life 
rendered still greater service to his country in sounding once 
more the note of Lincoln’s second inaugural speech, which 
he used to quote to those who thought that he ought to go 
to his grave with malice toward some. 


CHAPTER XXX 
A BLOW RAG ROE HIGH eGo S Da ast LV LING. 


N 1920 the cost of living in the United States reached 

a new high level. The war had been over for a year 
and a half, but prices kept mounting steadily. Since there 
was no longer the money to pay what was asked, people went 
without even articles of every-day necessity, for the first 
time in their lives deciding to make last year’s things do. 
The Christmas season of 1919, although the larger general 
merchants, notably Wanamaker, were doing the biggest 
business in their history, foreshadowed an automatic buyers’ | 
strike in many lines. Just as manufacturers had become 
accustomed to war orders, retailers had grown to believe that 
the consuming capacity of the people would remain what 
it was when wages were abnormally high and there was 
plenty of work for everybody. 

Manufacturers were the first to feel the pinch of changed 
conditions. Contracts for future government supplies had 
been canceled when the war ended. The momentum of 
filling unfinished orders did not carry the manufacturers 
farther than the summer of 1919. All through the winter 
that followed they hoped for, but did not know how they 
could bring about, a return to normal conditions in home 
markets. They could see that deflation was going to set in, 
but they were unable to prepare to make it a gradual process 
because they could not get large advance orders from retail- 
ers. Retailers, in turn, thought not only of moving stocks 
already purchased without a loss, but also of the possibility 
of a heavy drop in the market after they had placed their 

428 


BLOW AT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 429 


orders for the next season. They believed that they had to 
keep prices up to liquidate existing stocks. What followed 
was logical. Manufacturers, selling very little and hard 
pressed for money, continued to raise their prices instead 
of lowering them. 

The time had come which Wanamaker prophesied nearly 
a decade before. At the Jubilee luncheon given him by the 
merchants of New York on November 16, 1911, he had 
said: 

There is a time surely not far off when the high cost of living must 


be cut down. The rumbling of the discontent that crosses the ocean to us 
ought to be a suggestion of what is apt to happen here in the near future. 


In the early part of 1920, on his houseboat in Florida, 
John Wanamaker set himself to study this serious situation. 
From different sources he got tables of comparative prices, 
and he had the benefit of reports issued by the Federal 
Reserve Bank. He discovered that since April, 1915, vir- 
tually every article of wearing apparel, house furnishings, 
and dry goods, had tripled or even quadrupled in price. 
Turning to his physician, he exclaimed: “What are the poor 
people going to do?” The patient could not be kept much 
longer away from Philadelphia. When Wanamaker got 
back to his office he found that conditions were worse than 
the reports had pictured them, and that the Fair Price Com- 
mission of the Department of Justice, at work in Philadel- 
phia, had disclosed intolerable conditions in many lines of 
retail trade. 

Wanamaker summoned his department heads, and asked 
them for specific reports of prices. ‘What do you find in 
regard to the new stocks you buy? What is the financial 
situation of the manufacturers from whom you buy? Is 
there any hope that prices will not continue to advance?” 
We give a sample of the replies: 


430 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Upon my return this morning from a two weeks’ vacation, I find 
that the prices have advanced upon washing machines, old-fashioned 
ironware, trunks, aluminum ware, tin ware, clothes wringers, and sewing 
machines, which really are the heart of the house-furnishings business. 
Trunks have advanced in cost four times in about five months, and 
clothes wringers three times in about four months. There is no cer- 
tainty of the quotations upon house furnishings of any description. For 
two years it has simply been a question of “make shipments.” ‘This 
condition, according to well-informed factory chiefs, will exist at least 
until July, with a possibility of slight recessions at that time, due to the 
supply about meeting the demand and the shelves in the factories accumu- 
lating some merchandise for prompt forwarding. 

One of our salesmen this morning said that unless he received two 
scales promptly, the orders would be lost, and in looking up our requisi- 
tion, we find that the scales were ordered last November and are made 
in New York City. Stock has necessarily been ragged, but customers 
realize conditions and have been very patient; if a two-quart saucepan 
was wanted and out of stock, the customer would be satisfied with a 
1¥4 or 2% quart pan, and that attitude prevailed all along the line, the 
customer being in the position of the merchant—taking what was obtain- 


able and paying the price. 


Ever since the United States entered the war people had 
been talking about “the high cost of living.” But wages 
had soared; and even where high prices caused hardship, 
there was the natural explanation of abnormal war condi- 
tions, entailing sacrifices on everybody. After the war, 
however, the “H. C. of L,” as it was commonly called, 
became a matter of universal resentment. The government 
investigated. But that was all! There was no pronounce- 
ment from Washington. President Wilson lay ill in the 
White House. Since the summary dismissal of Secretary 
Lansing, no Cabinet member dared speak for the Adminis- 
tration. When Wanamaker realized that prices were still 
on the upgrade and that relief could not be expected until 
midsummer, if then, he decided to do something about it. 

He had a precedent in his own business for what was in 


BLOW AT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 431 


his mind. In 1917, when the government regulated coal 
and prices were beginning to go up inordinately, he had 
launched a “million-dollar sale,” which had had immediate 
effect. His executives in Philadelphia and New York had 
co-operated splendidly with him at that time, and they were 
now ready to work out and carry through, under Wana- 
maker’s direction, another and far greater offensive against 
high prices. With $20,000,000 in stocks in the two stores, 
Wanamaker believed that if he slashed prices on this amount 
of merchandise, he could compel other New York and Phil- 
adelphia retailers to follow suit. Some of his staff who 
knew of the plan suggested ten per cent on staples, twenty 
per cent on fashions and seasonable goods, and thirty per 
cent on novelties. ‘We are not a 10, 20, 30 cent show” 
was his comment. 

Late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 1, John Wana- 
maker decided to offer everything in the stores at 20 per 
cent discount from the marked price. As none of his sales- 
people knew he was going to do this, there would be no 
chance to reprice stocks in any department. He wrote out 
in his own hand the page advertisement that was to affect 
profoundly the economic life of the nation, and showed it 
only to his son Rodman, who was in full sympathy with 
him, and to his executives and advertising managers. In 
strict confidence it was given to the New York and Philadel- 
phia newspapers for publication on Monday morning. 

The Wanamaker advertisement on May 3, 1920, an- 
nounced that the time had come to break the high cost of 
living. On that date and until further notice the full 
retail stocks of the Wanamaker Stores in New York and 
Philadelphia (excepting about $50,000 of articles held 
under price restriction) would be offered to the public at 
twenty per cent reduction from actual prices. In order to 
influence manufacturers and speculators holding goods for 


432 JOHN WANAMAKER 


higher prices, and in order to continue these sales, Wana- 
maker agreed to expend $1,000,000 each week in taking 
over any desirable merchandise and to pay cash for it on 
the day of delivery. He declared that he would “give our 
customers every advantage possible in keeping up the sale 
by means of any reduction that we can get from the manu- 
facturers in expending this money.” In conclusion, the 
advertisement said: 

We are simply mastered by a spirit of duty to help the people who 
have helped us in this renewed effort to start a movement in lowering 


the selling price of merchandise and to bring on more quickly the “better 
days coming” to this Nation. 


The approval of the Department of Justice’s Fair Price 
Committee was instantaneous. Before noon Wanamaker 
received the following letter from its chairman: 


It was most gratifying to read your splendid statement in to-day’s press 
and I want to express the appreciation of this Committee for your 
co-operation in lowering prices in the face of a rising market. 

This Committee has worked earnestly to bring relief to the public by 
securing a reduction in prices—stimulating sane economy and at the 
same time vindicating the good name of our reputable merchants. 

If the merchants in general will manifest your “spirit of duty” and 
the public will respond by only buying what they actually need and 
labor will give adequate service for just compensation and all of us 
then lock arms to bring about the “‘better days coming” instead of call- 
ing each other names, we shall avert the financial crash that seems almost 
inevitable. 


The response of the public was equally prompt. Before 
the end of the first week it was evident that the “buyers’ 
strike” was at an end. On Saturday, May 8, a world’s 
record was made for amount of sales in a retail store. On 
that day alone, without any back orders from other days or 
accumulated mail orders, there was actually sold in the two 
Wanamaker stores more than a million dollars worth of 
merchandise. On the tenth day Wanamaker was asked if 


BLOWJAT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 433 


he would accept a check for all his stocks at twenty per cent 
off. This offer he published in the store advertisement on 
the morning of May 14, with his answer: 

No. Absolutely and emphatically, no! Our sale is not to raise cash, 


but to bring down prices to the public—to the public, not to other 
merchants. 


Some New York and Philadelphia merchants “got on the 
band wagon” immediately. Others tried to devise schemes 
of reduction sales that would not seem to be an imitation 
of Wanamaker’s initiative. But it was not long before 
“twenty per cent off” had to be adopted by all, except by 
leading local general merchants. It spread like wildfire all 
over the United States. Merchants of other cities sent tele- 
grams asking permission to reproduce the Wanamaker 
advertising. From the Atlantic to the Pacific the news- 
papers mentioned John Wanamaker probably more than at 
any time since he had been Postmaster-General. The ver- 
dict of public opinion was strikingly expressed by Cassel’s 
cartoon in the New York World. John Wanamaker was 
pictured with a bat about to strike a baseball, labelled 
“FH. C. of L.,” over the caption, “Knocking a Homer.” 

Of course there were critics who said that the reduction 
sale was a “flash in the pan advertising stunt,” and could not 
last more than a fortnight; or that Wanamaker was hard 
pressed for cash and was liquidating his stock; or that the 
announcement of this policy was a confession of profiteering 
on the part of retailers. But Wanamaker declared that he 
had no intention of stopping the sale until its object was 
accomplished. He pointed out that he was using the money 
that came in to buy new stocks. Only the law of supply 
and demand, functioning normally again, would establish 
a fair price level. He had simply come to the conclusion 
that “somebody had to do something” and that “the nation- 
wide response to his initiative was a choice between lower 





eee ne, 
+ 0 wen oniweuth 


““KNOCKING A HOMER” 


John Cassel in the New York World, May 5, 1920 


BLOW AT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 435 


prices. and restricted consumption.” The public had been 
educated to the use of less merchandising, which was leading 
to “contracting business and curtailing employment.” What 
had almost instantly followed his move was proof that busi- 
ness men had been determined “to avoid this condition 
through releasing hoarded stocks by concessions in price to 
be shared by both the manufacturer and the retailer.” 

He kept hammering daily his offensive. On May 18 he 


announced: 


The whole country seems to be waking up to work down some of the 
cost of living. ‘There are good signs of decisive progress in the last 
fortnight, and if all the critics would join us in an honorable attack 
against advancing costs, the great victory could be won. 


At the end of the third week, when his attention was 
called to the criticism of a Florida merchant, who declared 
that prices were coming down, that it was “the fierce weather 
they had had all spring in New York that caused Wana- 
maker to unload, and that his and similar much-touted sales 
were made from motives of pure business expediency,” he 
said: : 

Thank you for your kindly interest in telegraphing me the rigmarole 
of some one published in the Tampa Times. No such statement ever 
reached me in my life that had so many falsehoods in it. Our business 
never was so large as it has been this year before the patriotic movement. 
We had no overstock and were especially free from old stock, the large 
sweep of daily business flushing the pipes and keeping us with a clean 
stock. The rainy weather did not sensibly affect our business. ‘The 
creating cause of the inception of the movement was the pressure to sell 
on owners of Liberty and Victory Bonds, under the influence of the 
Federal Reserve Banks, the poverty of the people who had taken small 
amounts to reduce a Government Bond to a discount of between 15 and 
20 per cent. 

The action of the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, stating 
publicly in the newspapers that the tendency of prices for the Autumn 
would be upward, led me to resolve that I would do my utmost to stand 
in the way of raising the high prices already current. 


436 JOHN WANAMAKER 


We have sold practically one-half of our stock with which we began, 
and we have bought with cash at retail selling prices seven millions of 
dollars. If you have any one in Tampa or anywhere else who would 
offer to take our entire stock and give us a certified check on any bank 
or trust company for the full regular prices, without the 20 per cent 
deduction, they could not have it. 

For the great purpose of halting the disposition of some manufacturers 
and corporations to continue to raise prices, we have undertaken to serve 
notice that we will not stand for any increase of prices. We are not 
agents for manufacturers or corporations. We own the stock we have, 
and it is paid for. We are not cutters of prices, but we have used, tem- 
porarily, the opportunity to awaken the people to some duty besides 
simply making profits, irrespective of what is due to our patient customers 
who, during the war, have met the high prices, and who are restive at the 
idea that they have got to continue to be at the mercy of people that, by 
combinations and selfishness, insist on getting out of their business all 
that they can, with powerful influence and great wealth back of them. 
You are at liberty to use this in any way you like. 


The twenty-per-cent sales continued through June. On 
June 23 Wanamaker gave notice that the sale would close 
on July 2, because he believed that the movement for lower 
prices had accomplished its purpose. The statistics of the 
United States Department of Labor show that the crest of 
high prices was reached in May, 1920, and that the H. C. 
of L. began to grow less immediately following the Wana- 
maker campaign.’ In nine weeks, with the cash received 
from the sale he had bought new merchandise to the amount 
of $13,511,000. 

* Taking March, 1913, as 100, these statistics give 199 for January, 1919, 
and 247—+the peak of high prices—for May, 1920. By January, 1922, prices 
had receded to 138. The Federal Reserve report for the Ninth District at 
the end of May, 1920, said: “The steadily accumulating evidence of the 
month indicates that the peak of high prices has been reached and that a gen- 
eral break has occurred.” Three weeks later the same source reported that the 
“recent changes in prices afford a basis that may broaden into a far-reaching 
alteration in the essential price structure.” Accumulative evidence is found in 
the reviews of Bradstreet and Dun, and reports of New York and Philadel- 


phia banks at the end of May and the beginning of June, followed by Chi- 
cago and St. Louis in the second week of June. 


BLOW AT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 437 
After it was all over Wanamaker wrote: 


We closed the doors of our New York and Philadelphia stores last 
week on what some people derisively called a “thunderbolt of commerce.” 
As owners of the $20,000,000 of merchandise, it was quite within our 
right to do as we desired with our own property. 

Without consultation with the nabobs of statesmanship, banking, or 
manufacturing, one man alone prepared the statement published Monday, 
May 3, and not ten persons had any idea of it until they read it over 
his signature that morning. It was met by the opposition of neighbors, 
trade jealousies, monthly and other newspapers, supported by certain 
tradesmen to exploit certain lines of merchandise. We had counted the 
cost and took the chances and kept on bombarding big prices with powder 
at our own cost, and kept it up for two months instead of the two weeks 
we intended. 


This great feat was accomplished when Wanamaker was 
approaching his eighty-second birthday. Cyril Jackson, a 
great Dean of Christ Church, at the end of a long life, 
gave a brilliant undergraduate the secret of keeping fit and 
reaching old age with effectiveness unimpaired. To Robert 
Peel he said: “Work very hard and unremittingly. Work, 
as I used to say sometimes, like a tiger, or like a dragon, 
if dragons work harder than tigers. Don’t be afraid of 
killing yourself. Only retain—which is essential—your 
former temperance and exercise, and your aversion to mere 
lounging, and then you will have abundant time both for 
hard work and company.” No formula more aptly expresses 
the spirit and practice of John Wanamaker. He was never 
through with life. Up to his last days, he did not cease 
dominating the world in which he lived. Not being afraid 
of killing himself by work, he still had in his eighties 
abundant time both for hard work and for company. 

The blow at the high cost of living was Wanamaker’s 
own idea, put into execution by himself, and carried through 
against tremendous pressure. From the beginning of the 
sale he was besieged by some of his own people as well 


438 JOHN WANAMAKER 


as by manufacturers’ associations and trade organizations 
to make exceptions to the discount rule. Some interests 
pleaded with him; others tried to intimidate him. There 
were threats of lawsuits and boycotts. But he pursued his 
own way, knowing that his objective was right and confident 
that he could attain it. He did not get flustered or angry. 

Wanamaker was fortunate in having a son who saw eye 
to eye with him and in being able to count upon the co-oper- 
ation of a group of devoted men to his stores who had long 
been concerned over mounting prices and who had been 
working with him for years to protect the interests of cus- 
tomers. The “twenty per cent discount sale” was a logical 
result of what the whole Wanamaker organization had been 
thinking for a long time. But it was John Wanamaker 
himself who inspired and directed the sale. Only a mer- 
chant who was the sole owner of a gigantic retail business 
could have launched such a campaign and have seen it 
through successfully. 


Lhuladelfhia Jaly 26, 19180 


ire Ue G. Miller, 
Shiremanstown, Pens. 
My dear Sirs 
Thanking you, dear friend, for 
your letter of the 24th, here today, please 
spare me a little while before you erect any 
monument for mé. There are many things I would 
like to Goe I realise however, your good spirit. 
Very traly yours, 


Ht fren, 


NOT READY TO QuIT! 


“ iso 
feayg Cull 
api SS of Oy debe 
eh os fo BY ee 
ae qv tLUy ned & ia 
2% ee af, {04 ae 
i % [je 4 a Meare 
he jee. 
i wig ti se: epi 
io to ‘ YYrys Sty & 
“tind hoi me 
eh late ne, 
ty be a 
ar Cifiny te bok i Care $ fico 


‘ud fryp +d % Ged 

hud he v6 Cid 
GIy 2 4 

i ee UN 


pt ve, 
bY) Me Vay oy ; 
me Sth Ine om Oy Nay r- 


, 


fey previ. “n Poliyay fruenedy : ~Pideditfha 


CHAPTER XXXI 


AFTER SIXTY YEARS 


i OW do you keep?” said an old friend, who came to 
congratulate Wanamaker upon the sixtieth anniver- 
sary of Oak Hall. 


“Flappily busy,” was the answer. 

Because it was a truthful reply John Wanamaker did not 
have to fear old age. He had dismissed worrying about his 
physical condition when he was rejected for military service 
in 1861. In 1921 he could look back over the years and 
remember no period during which he had worried about 
himself or complained about circumstances over which he 
had no control. 

Sixty years of uninterrupted work in one business is no 
small achievement, whatever may be the degree of success 
attained. But Wanamaker had started his own business at 
the age of twenty-three, had developed it into an establish- 
ment known throughout the world, and at the age of eighty- 
three, he was still its head, making ambitious plans for the 
future. 

How had he done it? That is what the old friend wanted 
to know. 

“Tt is all in the two words with which I answered your 
first question,” said Wanamaker. “Many people are busy 
because they have to be. I am busy because I want to be. 
So I am happily busy.” 

After 1912, when he began the daily store editorials, 
Wanamaker wrote less in his diary than had been his custom 
during the two preceding decades. But there is enough to 

442 


AFTER SIXTY YEARS 443 


be able to state that he was fully as buoyant and cheerful as 
he had ever been, and that he continued to omit allusions to 
physical disabilities. From the diary a reader gains no 
knowledge of how Wanamaker was confined to the house 
at times with heavy colds, which were a source of anxiety 
to his physicians. Wanamaker was not interested in record- 
ing disagreeable things; nor did he write health bulletins to 
his friends. And he agreed with Mark Twain about 
weather. 
In the autumn of 1915 we find: 


A most lovely enjoyable happy November. I shaved me at 6:30, 
and am on the usual rounds of these busy days trying to spur up every- 


thing to a better speed. 


And at the beginning of the next Christmas season he 
wrote: 


I am right well—at work on high pressure, up to the last notch of 
endurance, but enjoying it all, and feel that I am making good for my 
boss, R. W. 


This is the first reference to the fact that the son had 
come more and more to assume the responsibility for the 
business. Frequently after 1916 Wanamaker said that 
“R. W.” was “the boss.” It was an affectionate and gener- 
ous way of stating his dependence upon the younger man, 
whom we have mentioned in those pages only when neces- 
sary to make the narrative clear. The letter reproduced here 
tells the whole story. The senior Wanamaker gave more of 
his strength than formerly to public affairs, to writing, and 
to the problems of the many outside organizations in which 
he was interested. His eagerness to do things was unabated, 
and his efficiency was unimpaired. But the tremendous 
effort he made from 1914 to 1919 in relief work, in national 
politics, in helping to win the war, was possible because he 


444. JOHN WANAMAKER 


did not need to be wholly engrossed in the problems and 
management of the stores. | 

And yet, with all his willingness to defer to his son and 
to lean on him, John Wanamaker never could dismiss the 
business from his mind. He was always thinking about it 
and for it; and he did not drop quietly into second place, 
nor did he surrender authority. 

“The time will come when you will have everything run- 
ning smoothly, and then you can sit back and breathe a deep 
sich of relief,” said a friend in the third year of the New 
Kind of Store. The forty-one-year-old Wanamaker of 
1879 simply grinned in answer. Telling the story years 
afterward, Wanamaker said that any man’s incomprehension 
was incurable, who thought that a time would arrive when 
a merchant could stop straining and take things easy! Such 
a time never came to Wanamaker. He knew that it would 
not, and he did not want it to. He was as keenly alive at 
eighty as he had been at forty to the imperative necessity of 
passing constantly in mental review his organization, his 
methods of business, his problems; and then, after the 
inspection, of getting down to hard thinking to find ways of 
strengthening weak places, rendering better service, increas- 
ing the volume of business. 

In Florida, on his houseboat, he used to make notes for 
the stores, just as he had been doing throughout his career. 
The octogenarian would reorganize the business in his mind, 
question the work of every department; and he believed 
that there was need for changes throughout the business. 
How his mind, far away from Philadelphia and New York, 
worked in the interests of the Wanamaker stores is shown 
in the notes he was constantly making. For illustration, 
five closely written sheets, dated “Gulf of Mexico, Febru- 
ary 16, 1917,” and headed, “How to be better organized,” 
contain a consideration of the problem under sixteen heads, 


ATER SI] XY YEARS 445 


followed by the suggested solution. He worked out on 
paper a new “general staff.” He reclassified the store 
under eight sections, which he called “combination move- 
ments of departments.” He enumerated a long list of 
“new conveniences and attractions to be introduced.” In 
1918 and 1919 these notes were added to, and many of the 
ideas were carried out. An idea of 1920, brought back 
from Florida, broke the rising cost of living. Could a man 
grow old who, after sixty years in business, said, “I walk 
faster and I work better than I did when I was half my 
age?” 

Elsewhere we have spoken of Wanamaker’s habit of 
making tours of inspection of his buildings. He felt that 
he could not from his office run a business that was depend- 
ent upon personal contacts of employees with customers. 
He had to be out on the floor. In the American navy the 
captain of the ship is required to make a personal inspection 
from hold to masts at stated intervals. Wanamaker had 
always been accustomed to do this, and, undismayed, he 
kept on making the rounds when his buildings became vast, 
and there was New York to think of as well as Philadelphia. 
It required walking miles, and there was some remonstrance 
in the latter years on the ground of possible over-exertion. 
But Wanamaker knew that moving about helped to keep 
him young; and he declared that the more extensive his 
establishments, the more imperative the tours of inspection 
of the owner. The private files contain transcripts of notes 
taken during these tours. 

On May 16, 1921, he visited the seventh, eighth, ninth, 
tenth, and eleventh floors. On May 31 he started on the 
sixth floor and went down to the second. A glance through 
the notes is all that is needed to realize that the merchant 
of eighty-three was as observant as ever. He hated rub- 
bish and disorder anywhere on his premises, and insisted 


446 JOHN WANAMAKER 


on having stock rooms and factories spick and span; he 
thought of hygienic conditions for his employees; and he 
had an eagle eye for overstocking and overstafing. In 
regard to merchandise, he was still watchful of quality and 
price, and he still had ideas, bold and original, concerning 
display. He was still thinking of better lighting and bet- 
ter ventilation; and he asked himself, “How can we render 
better service to our customers?” 

The records of 1920 and 1921 show also not only a con- 
tinuance of interest in, but the study of new plans for, 
improving the quality of stocks, the salesmanship, and the 
educational and recreational facilities of the Wanamaker 
stores. With all his outside interests and activities, the 
stores were never absent from his mind. The aged mer- 
chant talked to his buyers with the force and acumen of 
earlier days; he visited departments for conferences about 
their own particular problems; and he had time and strength 
—and better still, patience—to give to individuals who, for 
one reason or another, were not making good in the duties 
assigned to them. In advertising conferences, which took 
place almost daily, he was the same vigorous, positive chief 
that he had always been. 

The celebration of Wanamaker’s sixty years as a merchant 
had nothing perfunctory in it. It was not in the nature of 
a tribute to a man who had been a force and who had done 
notable things. The last two years had been by far the 
greatest of the Wanamaker business in volume and value 
of sales, in advertising feats, and in leadership in the mer- 
cantile world. During 1920 Wanamaker had personally 
conceived and put through the twenty-per-cent discount 
sale. On the morning of April 26, 1921, at the Philadel- 
phia store, it was the active head of the business who 
received the congratulations of his employees. Representa- 
tives of the Paris, London, and Oriental houses brought 


AFTER SIXTY YEARS 447 


gifts from the Wanamaker staff abroad, and a lacquered 
box with the felicitations of the Emperor and Empress of 
Japan. Speaking for the New York and Philadelphia 
houses Mr. Rodman Wanamaker said: 

“Great chief and founder, I have been chosen by your 
workers, one from their midst, to represent the New York 
and Philadelphia houses on this eventful occasion. In the 
midst of our store family I am so full of emotion that no 
words would express fully the feelings of 16,000 hearts 
that beat oftentimes for you. We thought of what we 
could do for you to-day, but we knew that in your modesty 
the only thing we could give would be a simple token from 
our hearts. This gold medal, with the eagle grasping the 
American flag, is an expression of your life. On it we 
have put your motto: LET THOSE WHO FOLLOW ME CON- 
TINUE TO BUILD WITH THE PLUMB OF HONOR, THE LEVEL 
OF TRUTH, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF INTEGRITY, EDUCATION, 
COURTESY, AND MUTUALITY. On behalf of the Philadel- 
phia and New York organizations I bestow upon you their 
highest testimonial of love and devotion.” 

From his office Wanamaker was taken to the Bellevue- 
Stratford, to a testimonial luncheon that had been arranged 
by a committee of citizens, headed by the mayor. More 
than a thousand men, prominent in the political, educa- 
tional, religious, and business life of the city and nation 
gathered to do honor to the merchant who had been for a 
generation the best-known Philadelphian. New York was 
represented by her mayor. Governors of Pennsylvania 
past and present, Senators, a cardinal and other churchmen, 
were at the head table; and letters and telegrams from the 
President of the United States and rulers of other countries 
were read. One after another the heads of large general 
stores rose to their feet to give a personal greeting to the 


448 JOHN WANAMAKER 


man who had blazed the path, starting before most of them 
were born, for the new era in retail merchandising. 

The mind of the guest of honor was, characteristically, 
on the future. When he arose to respond to the greetings 
and congratulations, he gave little time to a review of the 
past. The manuscript that he had prepared was thrown 
aside. He asked permission to “ramble on a bit, instead 
of making a set speech.” He made a plea for attention to 
the port needs of Philadelphia, picturing a great future 
for the city, and insisted upon the importance of the 
approaching sesquicentennial in 1926. It was a symbol and 
proof, the invitation to the world to help us celebrate, of 
our recognition of the interdependence of nations: 

“There is something in the American heart that wants 
prosperity for other people. Then, too, we can’t prosper 
just by ourselves. The country must learn that. We can’t 
put a wall about ourselves. We must keep the gate open 
and have prosperity together.” 

He declared that he was overwhelmed by the honor done 
him, most of all because he was in a gathering of friends, 
and he did not dare to let his emotion get the better of 
him. After all, his life had only been that of a man who 
had tried to serve, and because he was still eager to serve, 
the occasion was not his swan song. 

“Life is a beautiful thing. Our Heavenly Father did 
not put us down here to mourn and lose ourselves in some 
kind of a fog. Iam always glad to get up in the morning 
to see the sun rise and to feel thankful for the light of day. 
Life is a beautiful thing, I say. The world is unfinished. 
We are here to play our part in it and of all things we need 
only to want to make the best of our own lives. 

“T recognize profoundly the goodness of the Ruler of 
the Universe to grant me the privilege of so many years. 
A thousand years in His sight are but as a day. I have 


AFTER SIXTY YEARS 449 


counted up the days I have been permitted to live, from the 
11th of July, 1838, to the present day, and I have had 
30,262 days. 

“But I recall the silver anniversary of Pope Leo’s pontifi- 
cate. I happened to be in Rome at the time, and was one 
of the 125,000 gathered under the magnificent dome of 
St. Peter’s to acclaim him. Leo was ninety-two, and very 
feeble. One of his old friends came to him, and said, 
“Your Holiness, you look pretty well. Why, I think you 
might live to be a hundred.’ The Pope was ninety-two. 
The little man, with his smiling face and the fine hands I 
saw folded over his breast, answered, ‘Why limit me?’ ” 

What John Wanamaker said at the sixtieth anniversary 
luncheon expressed exactly his feelings. There was no 
thought whatever of slackening the pace or of resting on 
past laurels. He was not going to be limited! Not so 
long as there was strength and opportunity for service! 
After the celebration Wanamaker arrived at the store earlier 
each morning, until his office staff had to be there before 
eight o’clock to anticipate him, and he kept it up for months. 


CHAPTER XXXII 
FLORIDA TRIPS 


ANAMAKER never took a vacation in the com- 

monly accepted sense of that word. There were 
times when he felt that he would like to get off somewhere 
for a real rest, and have day follow day with nothing to do, 
nothing to think about. In a wallet we found, torn from a 
newspaper : 


I wisht I was a little rock 
A’settin’ on a hill; 

A’doin’ nothing all day long 
But just a’settin’ still. 

I wouldn’t eat, I wouldn’t drink, 
I wouldn’t even wash, 

I’d set and set a thousand years 
And rest myself, by gosh. 


But he never entertained notions of this kind for long. 
It was not in him to rest; and he refused to rest, even when 
warned to do so by his medical advisers. The physician of 
his latter days told us: 


Mr. Wanamaker worked seven days in each week, and after six days 
at his business his Sunday at Bethany was one of the hardest days of all. 
He worked as he did everything, with his whole heart, and each day 
to the limit of his strength. He had such supreme confidence in his 
recuperative powers that in the latter part of his life he made no con- 
cession whatever to age, and took no rest until compelled to. While he 
loved the out-of-doors and particularly the water, he loved his business 
and his church first. He got more pleasure out of his work than he 
could get out of play. 


450 


FLORIDA TRIPS ASI 
In his diary we find: 


wad. MM he “Cae 4 
2 y nahiral Ye GW 
cnn a 


f I hd Merfy {eer Yo 


He was not a business man of the type, however, that 
sticks to his desk year in and year out, never leaving because 
of the obsession that his associates could not get along with- 
out him. He did not take himself seriously enough for 
that; and once he had organized his business and put solid 
foundations under it, his common sense prompted him to 
get far away frequently. He felt that the merchant’s hori- 
zon needed constant broadening by travel and by engaging 
in outside activities of various kinds. From boyhood up 
his life was a contradiction of the narrower interpretation 
of the proverb of the shoemaker sticking to his last. He 
welcomed the quickening influence of an occasional sojourn 
among other people in his own and other lands. Much of 
his best thinking for the business, many of his happiest 
ideas, some of his important decisions, came when he was off 
somewhere and “able to see things in perspective,” as he 
expressed it. 

Through the years we find mention of many trips to 
Saratoga Springs, Bedford Springs, Virginia Hot Springs, 
Bretton Woods in the White Mountains, and of summering 


452 JOHN WANAMAKER 
at Cape May and Atlantic City. During four years he gave 


up business to serve in Harrison’s Cabinet. At this period 
there were long trips across the continent, into Mexico, and 
to the Chicago World’s Fair. For forty years he had the 
habit of going to Europe. The last transatlantic crossing | 
was in 1912, when he made a spectacular return to reach 
the Chicago Convention in time to second the renomination 
of President Taft. 

During the last decade of his life Florida trips gave the 
annual change. Wanamaker yielded to the insistence of his 
son and his physicians, and went away every year after 
Christmas, to remain in a warm climate until Easter. 

The Florida climate agreed with Wanamaker; and the 
houseboat life that it afforded was ideal for a man of Wana- 
maker’s temperament. He did not lke hotels. Trains 
and steamers were hard on him. With the houseboat he 
had his own home and could keep on the go. Best of all, 
the houseboat was a floating office; and he could work and 
read to his heart’s content. Once he got to Florida, he 
loved the life he led there. But it was always exceedingly 
difficult to get him to start south. We have said that he 
stayed in Philadelphia until he was compelled to go. But 
it was not his physician, and not even his son, that compelled 
him. Each year the same thing happened. ‘The houseboat 
was ready in November. Wanamaker would keep postpon- 
ing his departure, and then say that he did not propose to 
miss the Christmas season in the store and at Bethany. Next 
he would think that he was going to pull through the winter 
all right without Florida. Despite previous experiences 
(he was extremely susceptible to colds) each winter he 
would put off from week to week what reason told him 
was a necessary thing to do—to leave Philadelphia for a 
warmer and more agreeable climate. He would stay until 
he caught a severe cold, take to his bed, and then, as soon 


FLORIDA TRIPS 453 


as he had recovered sufficiently to travel, he would be 
whisked off to Florida.* Invariably he fought with all 
that was in him against the necessity of going away, but 
finally, having to admit defeat, he felt free to turn to what 
he would next best enjoy—a Florida trip. 

Wanamaker was “a good sport.” He accepted defeat 
cheerfully. When one door closed definitely on him, he 
did not stand futilely pining. He wasted no time in 
regrets. Once he was off to Florida, he forgot that he had 
not wanted to go, and gave himself up entirely to the busi- 
ness of regaining his lost strength and getting as much fun 
out of it as he could. He liked to start his winter trip 
as far north as the season and the weather would permit. 
He was delighted when he could board the houseboat at 
Charleston, and on the return voyage, if time permitted, he 
would not take the train until he reached Savannah. His 
physician has given us a graphic account, from which we 
quote: 


A houseboat offered the best opportunity to lead the kind of life that 
Mr. Wanamaker preferred. The boat had a broad beam for safety and 
to give plenty of room, with wide deck spaces, partly protected, where 
Mr. Wanamaker could be out-of-doors, yet sheltered from the wind. 
It was of small draft in order to negotiate the hundreds of miles of 
shallow water that lie just behind the coast line, all the way from 
Charleston to the southernmost tip of Florida. The consequent slow 
cruising rate Mr. Wanamaker did not mind, as it was part of his enjoy- 
ment to be able to see everything he passed. But he had also a small, 
fast, very seaworthy power boat, of which he was very fond, to use for 
ocean fishing and for trips up narrow, winding streams, where the larger 
boat could not go. 

Immediately on leaving Charleston we would enter the first of a series 


*In an undated letter, written in December, 1920, Wanamaker said: 
“With to-day’s storm raging I do not know now whether I shall get away, 
and it is so difficult to change reservations on R.R. trains. I am not cough- 
ing, but I am so very hoarse. It is three months since I have been able to 
attend Bethany. Yet I am well physically—only weak and worn and weary 
and feel the loss of opportunities to restore the strength expended during the 
last two years. The Gadfly lies waiting at Charleston.” 


ASA, JOHN WANAMAKER 


of long, narrow, winding channels, mostly natural, but some made by 
widening and deepening tiny creeks, with now and then a cut across a 
narrow neck of land. Then there would be bays, where for a short time 
we felt the roll of the sea. At times the necessity of following the 
marked channel would take us almost, but never quite, into the ocean. 
Much of the distance between Charleston and Jacksonville is through 
marshes, but these somewhat monotonous expanses had an unending charm 
for Mr. Wanamaker. Nothing that we passed seemed to escape his eye, 
and nothing was too trivial to interest him. 

The farther south he got, the greater was his interest and enjoyment. 
As much as he enjoyed the first few weeks, they were preparatory to the 
real business of the vacation. He planned to take three or four weeks 
at easy stages to reach Miami. During this time his life was ideal for 
rest and recuperation, which was essential, for he had invariably used 
up his strength to the limit in Philadelphia, cutting into his reserve 
to a dangerous extent. He would spend the day in his chair on deck, 
reading, playing innumerable games of dominoes, of which he was very 
fond, and writing the daily editorials for the advertising page. What- 
ever he was doing, he always kept his eyes on what was passing, and 
would frequently get up to have a better look at some flock of birds or 
another boat. By the time Miami was reached, his strength would be 
built up to a degree that made it safe to take short outside fishing trips. 


In the days when all the world had not yet flocked to 
Miami, John Wanamaker had turned from Jacksonville 
and Palm Beach to the southern part of Florida. He was 
one of the first to discover and enjoy Turtle Harbor and 
Angelfish Creek. In the transparent water he never tired 
of watching the brilliantly colored angel and parrot fish, 
the turtles, and the crawfish against the background of coral 
and grass. After Turtle Harbor and Long Key, the Wan- 
amaker houseboat turned north on the west coast, with 
Pass-a-Grille as the objective. He preferred Pass-a-Grille 
and St. Petersburg to any other part of Florida, partly 
because of the beach on the Gulf Shore, whose shells fasci- 
nated him, but mostly because of the kingfishing. If Eas- 
ter came early and the kingfish ran late, it was not difficult 


FLORIDA TRIPS 455 


to keep him at Pass-a-Grille until after Easter, even in 
1917, which had, as he declared, “the most momentous 
April since 1861.” 

Although he liked to catch different varieties of fish, 
when the kingfish came, he wanted to get the first one and, 
when the run was at its height, the most. For two seasons 
in succession, he was “high boat,”? 286 fish in one day, 280 
of them kingfish. He loved this gamy fish, large, swift, 
and savage, which leaped into the air when it missed the 
bait, sometimes more than 10 feet. He would often say, 
describing the day, that not one was shorter than his arm, 
and mindful of the fisherman’s reputation, he would appeal 
to his physician. While the kingfish were running, he 
fished every day, all day, except Sunday, and he would not 
come in until the approach of darkness made it risky to delay 
— longer to enter the pass.” 

A prize was offered by the local fishing club for the first 
kingfish of the season. In the very last year of his life, 
John Wanamaker won this prize. We found the check for 
five dollars for the “first kingfish, season of 1922,” among 
his papers. 

Wanamaker’s writings about Florida are too numerous to 
quote. Fishing he mentioned frequently. He said that 
he cared more for tarpon fishing by moonlight and that 
shark fishing was “great sport.” Glancing over his pen- 
ciled notes, we see that they show his deep interest in the 
“ten thousand islands, a shark fishing region,” of which he 
wrote: 


Not many people go there, for they are afraid of snakes and croco- 
diles. But I go there at the end of every winter. And I sit in the sum- 
mer-house on one of the islands, very early in the dawn-time, when 


*The St. Petersburg Daily Times, March 26, 1919, gave a two-column 
head to Wanamaker’s record catch of 146 kingfish in a day. For several 
weeks after his return he kept this newspaper in his desk to show to friends, 
and seemed for the time being prouder of the fishing exploit than of stories 
in the metropolitan newspapers about feats in the business and political world. 


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the morning star is going to meet the sun. I watch the sunrise. . . . At 
certain seasons early in the year people do come here because of the huge 
tarpon, so beautiful, so wily, and so hard to induce to come on board 
a boat. . . . Successive generations of the tree families have come and 
gone and repeated themselves. Cedars, buttonwoods, pines, mangroves, 
red and white palmettoes, and the same unbroken silence and loneliness 
pervade sea and sky. The virgin forests and the dense undergrowth 
of leaves and flowers whisper the songs that nature taught them. A little 
hut of an early settler. Wild birds. Raccoons. Water rats all about. 
Myriads of small mosquitoes. 


Back in 1905, when Wanamaker was at The Breakers 
in Palm Beach, he did not have a high opinion of winter- 
ing in Florida, of the people he met there, and of what they 
did. Several passages in his diary indicate this; and he 
wrote that he would far rather be in Europe than in Florida. 
But that was before the houseboat days, when he knew 

Florida only as a succession of pleasure resorts with large 
hotels. After he got accustomed to the kind of trips we 
have described on his “little houseboat,” as he affectionately 
called it, he preferred cruising in the inland waterways of 
South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to any voyaging that 
he had ever done. He did not miss Europe. For months 
he did not sleep on land, and with difficulty could he be 
coaxed off the houseboat to a meal. Once, when the boat 
was being repaired and was three days on the stocks, he 
stayed aboard the whole time. 

In 1916, the year before he chartered the Osiris, he 
took his Florida trip on his son’s steam yacht, the Nirvana. 
He boarded the yacht at Charleston, stopped at Jeky! 
Island, Jacksonville, Miami, Key West, Havana, Kingston, 
St. Petersburg, and Tampa; then back to Key West and 
Miami, Savannah, and Charleston, where he took the train 
to return home. The letters written on this trip show that 
he no longer had the old joy in being on the ocean for days 
on end. He was always wanting to put in at places to get 


458 JOHN WANAMAKER 


his mail, and to see things and people. For instance, on 
January 24, 1916, he wrote: 


On Boarp “Nirvana,” lying out five miles from Miami on a/c of 
the shallow water not admitting a yacht so large. We arrived here yes= 
terday, Sunday, at daybreak, and all well and without any mail since we 
embarked. ‘The mercury is at 82. The sea all around where I am 
writing is alive with gulls, sharks, and sunshine. I am breathing the good 
air to get back the strength that my ever-piling up colds at Phila. draw 
away from me. 

Yesterday after breakfast we were toted, rocked, and rolled over a 
rough sea in the steam launch to My-O-Me. It is baby-filled and its air 
is Dee-lishus. After hearing William Jennings Bryan teach an open air 
Bible class in the park at 9:45 we went to Church and heard a good ser- 
mon—then we had luncheon in a big hotel where I tried and couldn’t 
get a room because they were full and hadn’t even one room. I saw the 
famous Democrat of Louisville, Henry Watterson of the Courier Journal, 
and had a good talk with him. I told him I liked his mighty war talks 
in the N. Y. Herald. 

Afterward called on Mr. and Mrs. Bryan at their Cocoa Nut Village 
Cottage and had a fine hour. Then we raced back to the ship ahead of a 
threatening storm, which turned around after we arrived and ran away. 
I am better for the out-of-doorsness and warmth and I may stay awhile 
at Miami if I can get a fit place. 


Wanamaker did not try the luxurious Nirvana again for 
a long trip. He preferred houseboating, partly because of 
the constant little things he could be seeing and the fishing, 
but also because his houseboat was ideal for giving him out- 
of-doors and office hours at the same time. He was unhappy 
when he was not working. On the ocean the wind blew the 
pages of his book or newspaper and carried off his papers; 
his houseboat was arranged so that he could have fresh air 
and sunshine and still be at his desk. 

On March 28, 1918, he wrote: 

I have been right well, fishing and resting in the open. ‘To-morrow 


will be the last day of fishing. I am going out for tarpon, the big fish, 
so wily and strong and so hard to catch and to hold, as it has not teeth 


FLORIDA TRIPS 4.59 


and its jaws are all thick hard bones. Now we are on the home stretch 
after these two months of utter laziness. 


Wanamaker’s idea of “utter laziness” is amusing. The 
biographer finds among his papers of February and March, 
1918, an amazing variety of writings and drafts of plans 
for Bethany and the business and soldier welfare work. 
When he felt that he was “resting” and indulging in the 
luxury of “utter laziness” he was turning out editorials and 
war-loan advertisements, and made a detailed plan for a 
rearrangement of departments on the various floors of his 
Philadelphia building.* 

The next year he made another plan for both stores, and 
reorganized entirely on paper his “Down Stairs Stores.” 
He drafted a long memorandum to the Presbytery of Phila- 
delphia about the future of Bethany Collegiate Church; 
and had a list of hundreds of names of Brotherhood men 
which he had checked for sending postcards. His 1919 
Florida diary was a little red engagement book, in which 
he jotted down all sorts of ideas. On February 12, for 
example, it was the draft of an inscription for the war 
memorial of Bethany Church, and the next day it was an 
advertisement, beginning: “Wanamaker Antique Galleries. 
Exceedingly moderate prices. Heirlooms in silver.” The 
merchant in Wanamaker never suffered eclipse. He was 
proud of his calling, and it was uppermost in his mind 
throughout his life. 

The diary of 1920 is prefaced by a series of epigrams, 
mostly relating to business. Among them we find, next to 
the entry recording putting out from Charleston, this sen- 
tence in big letters: You Have Got To Run a Store THat 


* This necessitated early rising, which was easy—and the natural thing— 
on the houseboat. A friend, who was with him on one of the trips, told us: 
“He did his best writing between five and six in the morning. He was 
always out of bed before the sun came up, and the first thing he did was to 
eat a big juicy apple.” 


460 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Prope Witu Feet At Home In! Of this trip he wrote 
to a friend: 


It was on December 17 that we went out from Charleston in this good 
boat Gadfly and we have slowly sauntered over the back channels— 
narrow and shallow—greatly enjoying the silences and the scenery almost 
closed in all the way by the islands covered with mangroves and rubbers, 
with hedges here and there of blowing hibiscus. St. Augustine—where 
we tarried for a night—and West Palm Beach had their brilliant poin- 
settias abloom. 

As for my health, it is better. I feel rested and stronger, but I was 
jaded and down beyond words. I have gained by being out-of-doors on 
deck or on a fishing boat all day. I am here in the Gulf of Mexico 
where Shark River empties into the Gulf. There are no post-office facili- 
ties nearer than St. Petersburg—two days distant—and no railroads nearer 
than Tampa, I think, or Fort Meyer. ‘Think of being away from the 
P. O. for three days of beautiful sailing and restfulness. But I have 
written some poor little corner pieces. 


He wrote also a series of striking advertisements for the 
Penny Savings Bank, and advised some real-estate people 
about developing a large tract in the Everglades. 

The last Florida trip was in the first months of 1922, 
when Wanamaker won the prize for the first kingfish at 
Pass-a-Grille. He spoke at the Tampa Rotary Club, and 
was elected an honorary member of the St. Petersburg 
Yacht Club. Homeward bound in April, he told Florida 
friends that in the autumn he would listen to his medical 
advisers, and get back before Christmas. 


ME. eeancee TT ee eee Teta 





(Photo. by Harry S. Hood) 
At LINDENHURST IN 1921 





CHAPTER XXXIII 


LAST DAYS 


N a burst of enthusiasm, in 1915, a Pennsylvanian wrote 

to John Wanamaker declaring that a monument should 

be erected to him by public subscription. He received this 
answer: 


Thanking you, dear friend, for your letter of the 24th, here to-day, 
please spare me a little while before you erect any monument to me. 


There are many things I should like to do. 


It was a constant thought of the “many things” he 
wanted to do that kept Wanamaker young and bubbling over 
with good spirits. Because of the “many things” he could 
say with conviction, when he reached his eightieth year, that 
Stevenson’s lines appealed to him: 


The world is so full of a number of things 
I am sure we should all be as happy as kings. 


Physically there were times when nature flashed a red 
danger signal, especially at the approach of winter. Men- 
tally Wanamaker never felt old. He refused to think of 
his age as a handicap or deterrent to any of his activities. 
As early as 1900 life-long friends began to die. For more 
than two decades he lived on, a busy man, surviving younger 
contemporaries. Wanamaker once said that while no man 
had the right to regard himself as “immune from the Har- 
vester,” he was justified in assuming that he was going to 
live. He could “leave the call in God’s hands.” This was 
certainly Wanamaker’s philosophy. He was so taken up 
with “many things” that his mind was not upon death, 

461 


462 JOHN WANAMAKER 


but upon life. Of course this attitude made him the despair 
of his physician, who had to struggle hard against the stub- 
born unwillingness to take proper care of himself. On the 
other hand, in keeping alive and well his splendid mental 
attitude more than offset the risks he took. 

We have seen how he never started to Florida until he 
had to. He enjoyed the Florida months keenly when he 
got there, but he always felt that the business needed his 
presence. This conviction is expressed in one of his famous 
epigrams, “The best fertilizer for the farm is the footprint 
of the farmer.” No wreck of a man, victim of the ravages 
of time, but an upright figure, with springing step, smiling 
face, and alert eyes, walked through the stores day after 
day in 1921 and 1922. He was still the master of his busi- 
ness. His presence, he believed, was good not only for the 
stores, but for himself. This thought he expressed in one 
of the last editorials: 


WHY SHOULD A MAN SHRIVEL LIKE A TREE 


when he comes to middle or old age? Long years well spent need not 
wither his powers of mind, heart, and body. Humping off by himself 
all the time is a great mistake. It is not true, as he thinks, that nobody 
wants him. Be it so in some cases, anyway, the fault is half the time in 
himself. No man has a right to be in his family or in society a sourball 
such as we used to buy for a penny when we were boys. 


There were those who thought Wanamaker was too 
enthusiastic over Pollyanna. ‘The book was criticized as 
literature and as philosophy of life. But Wanamaker, 
aware of all the good-natured fun that was being poked at 
Pollyanna, continued to give away copies of the book. The 
man who had gone beyond his eightieth birthday could 
demonstrate from his own life the truth of the theme of 
the book. Because of the giver, it could not fail to be good 
medicine. People came to Wanamaker with their problems, 
eager for the advice he could give them out of his rich 


LAST DAYS 463 


experience, and they were sometimes a bit mystified when 
he simply told them that everything would come out all 
right and handed them a copy of Pollyanna. 

“Easier to say than to do, you think, but I have done it, 
and I am doing it now,” said Wanamaker to a Washington 
merchant, who had come to him ina crisis in 1921. “You 
just have to keep a stiff upper lip and say to yourself that 
worry is the worst enemy. It is all expressed in two lines 
of one of the soldier songs: ‘Pack up your troubles in your 
old kit bag, and smile—smile—smile.’ ” 

A favorable atmosphere in which to keep cheerful was 
created around him by the store family. That his people 
responded to his unvarying cheerfulness had much to do 
with his not feeling the weight of age. Their affection for 
him gave him joy; and in their loyalty he renewed his 
strength. The tribute of the merchant who had been in 
business for more than sixty years to those who worked 
with him is treasured by them: 


This old store is one of the best examples of the possibility of keeping 
young. Look at the people, many of whom have served together for a 
lifetime. We live in a clean, bright place, full of cheerfulness; we 
have the things that people want when they come to buy; we have some- 
thing to do that we like to do; and there is nothing around us like 
grouchiness, suspicions, scolding, quarrels, to darken the sky of the day. 
Everybody draws the line even at frowns. 


On January 6, 1922, the Associated Press received a tele- 
gram from Florida that John Wanamaker had died. The 
rumor was denied; but one news agency insisted on hearing 
his voice over the telephone; and a Philadelphia newspaper 
said that the denial would not be convincing unless the rep- 
resentative was allowed to see the merchant, who, they were 
assured, was neither dead nor in Florida, but right in his 
office at that moment in an important conference. Wana- 
maker explained that he was “never more alive in his life,” 


464 JOHN WANAMAKER 


and added, with a twinkle in his eye, “The fact is, I have 
here a note asking me to make an appointment in 1926.” * 
Following his usual habit, Wanamaker had postponed the 
southern trip. He did not leave for Florida until Janu- 
ary 18. Before the end of April he was back in his ofhice, 
and took up his work with the old-time energy and zest. 

Wanamaker’s last days were not different from the days 
that had gone before. In the activities of the spring and 
summer of 1922 there is no trace of slowing down, of dimin- 
ished mental vigor. He was early at work, and stayed late. 
He saw hosts of people and kept up with his correspondence. 
He made his periodic visits to the New York store. He 
found time for Bethany problems and the Penny Savings 
Bank. He enjoyed as keenly as ever his editorial writing. 
He worked on matters of the Board of Education. He 
gave his usual luncheon to the directors of the Lord’s Day 
Alliance. He did not refuse invitations to speak. 

We find him accepting election as vice-moderator of the 
Presbytery of Philadelphia on May 1, and on May 6 the 
presidency of the Huguenot Society, which conferred upon 
him the Huguenot Cross. On August 10, at the inaugura- 
tion of WOO, the radio broadcasting station of the Phila- 
delphia store, he spoke before the microphone with force 
and humor, recalling the early days of the electrical era 
and his first association with Edison.” He was deeply inter- 


*Later wire dispatches from the South explained the report. Whitney 
Wesley Wanamaker, a South Carolina planter, had died at a Miami hotel, 
and the undertaker, in mistake, announced the death of John Wanamaker. 

* He began: “We are here to-night to do exactly what the Scriptures 
request: ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth; for He hath done 
marvelous things.? From the beginning God planted these wonders in the air 
and sky, dedicated to man’s use, hid them, perhaps to give him the joy of 
discovering them, and finally placed in his hands the glowing torch of science 
to reveal them.” He went on to tell of his visits to the young experimenter 
at Menlo Park and of the installation of the first electric lights in his store 
in 1877. He promised daily weather reports and time signals from Arling- 
ton, and ended up with a ringing declaration of faith in the new means of 
communication that he had done so much to encourage: ‘We regard the 
radio as an added instrument of great patriotic and civic power, to help 
to move the nation as well as the city in the right direction.” 


LAST DAYS 465 


ested in the completion of the painting of the Guildhall 
Coronation ceremony.’ 

On Monday afternoon, September 18, he presided at the 
monthly meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia. The 
next morning he got up at five and took the train to New 
York at seven o’clock. After his normal busy day there 
he returned to Philadelphia, and went to the Grace Presby- 
terian Church, where he presided at the installation of a 
new pastor. The next day he developed a cold, but refused, 
as usual, to rest. He coughed a great deal Wednesday 
night and slept very little. Despite noticeable fatigue, he 
went to his office on Thursday, September 21, and kept 
steadily at work until the middle of the afternoon, when 
his physician persuaded him to go home to rest. 

Wanamaker would not admit that he was ill, and he had 
no thought of dying. Only the occasional coughing spells, 
which annoyed him and which he wanted to get rid of, 
made him consent to stay at home. As week after week 
of confinement to the house followed, he did not lose his 
cheerfulness and his interest in things, he kept right on 
thinking and planning for the future, and by a constant 
effort of the will he showed no impatience because his body 
seemed no longer able to carry him along in the way he had, 
in his mind, determined to go. Just when he thought 
he was improving, violent coughing would set him back. 
Cheerfully would he start all over again to win back his 
strength. From Lindenhurst he was brought in to his 


*In appreciation of the hospitality shown him at the time of the Corona- 
tion of King George and Queen Mary, when he was a guest of the Lord 
Mayor, Wanamaker commissioned J. H. Bacon to paint the scene of the 
Guildhall reception. Bacon’s death and the World War delayed the comple- 
tion of the canvas. It was taken up by Mr. S. J. Solomon in the spring 
of 1922. With the aid of the King and Queen, Princess Mary, and the 
Prince of Wales, the artist was enabled to bridge the gap of more than 
ten years, and Wanamaker had the satisfaction of knowing during his last 
illness that the painting had been accepted by the City of London and hung 
in the Guildhall 


466 JOHN WANAMAKER 


town house at 2032 Walnut Street, and bulletins were issued 
in the middle of November stating that he was on the 
road to recovery. This encouraging condition lasted until 
December 10, when it was believed that his cold was over 
and that things were taking a turn for the better. 

But on the morning of December 12, 1922, the physicians 
issued the following bulletin: 


Mr. Wanamaker died at eight o’clock this morning, quietly and with- 
out suffering, from heart failure, induced by a short but violent cough- 
ing spell. He had slept well throughout the night, after having been 
distinctly brighter and stronger than usual the preceding day. His 
cough had not been troublesome for days, and had, apparently, ceased to 
be a factor in his condition. The heart action had from time to time 
given cause for anxiety, but had recently improved markedly. It, how- 
ever, proved unequal to the strain of coughing and failed suddenly. 
He rapidly became unconscious and continued to sink until the end. 


The statement of his physicians shows that John Wana- 
maker died as he had lived, gamely. His inflexible will 
never failed him. His last days were marked, as all his 
life had been, by quiet humor and strong faith. He wor- 
ried about nothing. He had no doubts. Constant strug- 
gles and many and deep sorrows had faced him through 
the years, but he had always been like a child in finding 
life a radiant adventure. 

He once said that it was his ambition to be worthy of the 
epitaph on Oliver Goldsmith’s tombstone, “He touched 
nothing that he did not adorn.” In repeating this epi- 
taph Wanamaker had written: “What more on earth can 
any human being ask for?” 


THE END 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The life of John Wanamaker was so intimately inter- 
woven with the fabric of his times that virtually every- 
thing written about the political and social and economic 
history of the United States since 1850 could be said to 
throw light upon his activities. His business and political 
career and his religious interests touched almost every out- 
standing movement and event in the life of Philadelphia 
since before the Civil War and in the life of New York 
since 1896. He was a power in national politics since the 
Harrison campaign of 1888. In the evolution of religious 
organizations he was a pioneer and remained an active force, 
as he did in the evolution of retail merchandising since 
1860. His influence was decisive and permanent in the 
development of modern advertising, and he is therefore in 
a very real sense one of the creators of the contemporary 
newspaper, and also of the periodicals of our age. Of the 
three American merchants who created what is perhaps er- 
roneously called the department store, he alone lived to 
continue his pioneering until department stores became what 
they are to-day. More than any other one man in the 
United States he is responsible for the introduction in this 
country of what great merchants of Paris and London con- 
tributed to the evolution of the department store, not only 
in business methods, but in the radical change of relations 
between seller and buyer, between employer and employee. 
He was a revolutionary factor in the development of postal 
communications. His fertile brain and bold and vivid imagi- 
nation and vision gave him a unique place among the colla- 
borators of Bell, Edison, Ford, and Marconi. The Young 

469 


470 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Men’s Christian Association and Sunday school, as we have 
these organizations to-day, owe more than can be estimated 
to his leadership. 

No bibliography, therefore, inserted as an appendix to 
the life of John Wanamaker, could claim to be comprehen- 
sive, much less to be complete. Hundreds of volumes that 
we cannot mention have been consulted on one point or 
another, although some of them contain a great deal directly 
about John Wanamaker’s influence and creative work. Es- 
pecially is this true in the great field of merchandising, 
advertising, and industrial relations. We can only hope to 
publish later our bibliography of the evolution of retail 
merchandising in the United States since 1860. Here we 
have to be content with giving a list of the sources, primary 
and secondary, for the life of the man and the growth of 
his stores. 

It was thought unwise to load the pages of the biography 
with copious footnote references. But the authority for 
every statement made and the quotations—very often in 
Wanamaker’s own handwriting—are preserved on fifteen 
thousand cards, thoroughly indexed and classified, which the 
biographer has given to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker. ‘This 
file includes a bibliography of nine hundred titles. 


SouRcCE MATERIAL 


Ancestry.—Records in archives of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, at 
Flemington and Trenton; rolls of Revolutionary War in office of 
Adjutant General of New Jersey; Pennsylvania archives at Harris- 
burg; records in County Court House at Warsaw, Indiana; records 
of Dayton, Ohio; Published documents listed under genealogy; state- 
ments in MS. notes, in letters from relatives to John Wanamaker; 
interviews and correspondence of the biographer; family papers and 
portraits. 

Early life-—Diaries of John Wanamaker, Sr.; Nelson Wanamaker’s rent 
book; old family letters; statements gathered from John Wanamaker’s 
letters, interviews, and speeches; visitation books of John A. Neff; 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 471 


pledge and account books of John Wanamaker; and a large number 
of letters written at various times to John Wanamaker from old 
friends, giving their reminiscences. 

1860-1876—Account books, letters, and later statements of John Wana- 
maker; advertisements of Oak Hall and first Chestnut Street Store; 
MS. accounts of trip abroad in 1871; correspondence between John 
Wanamaker and William Libbey of A. T. Stewart & Co.; Bethany 
Church papers; subscription books and papers relating to Finance 
Committee of Centennial Exposition; reminiscences of employees and 
friends concerning Oak Hall, the old P. R. R. Freight Depot, the 
first trip abroad, the Moody and Sankey meetings, and the prepara- 
tion for opening the Grand Depot. 

1876-1889—Correspondence and papers preserved in private files; news- 
paper cuttings; store publications; Bethany papers of various kinds; 
statements of friends and employees; John Wanamaker’s own MS 
reminiscences of these years; R. C. Ogden’s papers in the Library of 
Congress. 

1889-1893—Four annual reports as Postmaster-General; newspaper cut- 
tings; private correspondence; letters of Benjamin Harrison, Levi 
P. Morton, General Clarkson, Senators Quay and Cameron, and 
Philadelphia friends and political associates; MS. account and itinerary 
of Presidential transcontinental trip. 

1893-1903—-Papers and correspondence in private files; newspaper cut- 
tings; political and other speeches; newspaper interviews; Bethany 
papers; diary of trip to India; mass of MS. notes, bills, cards, letters, 
relating to experiences in Europe and Asia. 

1903-1922—Private files in the Philadelphia office, in one hundred and 
eight drawers, contain a virtually complete record of John Wana- 
maker’s business, religious, and public life from 1903 to the day of 
his death. Every activity, inside the stores and outside, is revealed 
in detail in these papers. Nothing is lacking. They contain also 
a vast amount of material for all the years before 1903; but they are 
complete only from 1903 on. Carbon copies of John Wanamaker’s 
answers are attached to important letters, or they contain in penciled 
notes in his own handwriting on their face the answers he desired 
made. Meetings with his administrative staff, his principal buyers, 
his architects, and with many outsiders who came to interview him 
about his business and religious activities, or to get from his own 
lips an account of his life, are preserved in the form of transcripts 
of stenographic notes. Forty scrapbooks record newspaper comment 
on John Wanamaker, extending back into the early eighties, but 
complete from 1889 to 1893, and from 1903 to 1922. All his 
speeches of this later period were typewritten and indexed and 


472 JOHN WANAMAKER 


made into bound volumes. From 1912 until his death daily edi- 
torials were written for the store advertisements, Very many of his 
public speeches and Bethany talks are preserved in his own hand. 
In addition, from 1903 to 1920 diaries and personal letters give a 
graphic and minute day-by-day account of what John Wanamaker 
did and thought. They are especially colorful in recounting his 
adventures abroad; and they are of the utmost value in giving the 
story of the new buildings in Philadelphia and New York and the 
great panic of 1907 and the additional blow that came through the 
death of Thomas B. Wanamaker, following shortly after the retire- 
ment of the son and Robert C. Ogden through ill health. Corre- 
spondence with real-estate operators in New York, and his own 
minute notes and figures, give the story of how the block on which 
the new building stands was assembled, and other interesting real- 
estate operations in New York. 


Books anD ARTICLES BY JOHN WANAMAKER 


Miscellaneous Addresses (May 12, 1902, to December 31, 1921) 2 vols., 
436 pp.; 310 pp. MS. 

The Evolution of Mercantile Business. An address at the annual meeting 
of 1900 of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 
Annals, May, 1900. Reprinted as chapter in Modern Merchan- 
dising, Vol. I. 

Hearings Before the Industrial Commission: Conditions of Capital and 
Labor. Washington, 1900. (Wanamaker’s testimony is contained 
on pages 450-468.) 

The John Wanamaker Commercial Institute—A Store School. In Azmnals 
of American Academy of Political and Social Science, January, 1909, 
pp- 151-155. 

Address Before the Wanamaker Business Club. Philadelphia, 1909. 
Published by the Club. 

Life of Isaiah Williamson. Philadelphia, 1908. 79 pp. MS. 

The German Colonists. In The Pennsylvania German for January, 1909 
(Vol. 10, No. 1). 

Recreation Fosters Efficiency. Independent, November 30, 1914. 

Lest We Forget. An interwoven chronology of American history and the 
Wanamaker business. Appeared in the Red Book of 1899, and re- 
printed in the store’s “A Short History of the United States,” 1904 
or 1905. 

The Business Man’s Ideal. Red and Blue, February, 1912. 

Training Boys for Retail Career. Dry Goods Economist, April, 1912. 

My Measure of Success. System, October, 1913. Used, with full page 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 473 


portrait, as preface to Vol. I, “Business Management” of the Library 
of Business Practice: A. W. Shaw Co., Chicago, 1914. 

Sales Training Methods. In Vol. IV of same series. 

Bringing Business Efficiency into Christian Service. Sunday School Times, 
October 14, 1914. 

Postal Savings Reserve for Ships. The Nation's Business, October 15, 
IQI4. 

The George Williams I knew. Association Men, October, 1921. 

Observations in India. Missionary Review, September, 1902 (Address at 
Presbyterian General Assembly, 1902). 

A Burning Lamp Lit Fifty Years Ago: Glimpses of the early days, by 
the one who brought the Sumday School Times and H. Clay Trum- 
bull together. Golden Jubilee number of Sunday School Times, 
January 2, 1909. 

Eight People Who Have Helped Me. Friendly Hand from Across the 
Sea, August, 1899. 

Mother’s Day in the Sunday School. Pennsylvania Herald, June, 1908. 

Good Times are Near. The Right Angle, December, 1921. 

Business Outlook for 1922. Poor Richard’s Almanac, January, 1922. 

John Wanamaker on Life Insurance. San Francisco, 1891. 16 pp. 

On Life Insurance. Address at National Association of Life Underwriters 
banquet, Philadelphia, October 25, 1895. Uvited States Review, 
October, 1895. 

Address before the Fidelity Leaders’ Convention, Philadelphia, September 
10, 1913. Published by Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. 

Founder’s Day Address: To His Business Family on the Occasion of Open- 
ing the First Section of the New Building in Philadelphia. Phila- 
delphia, 1906. 95 pp. 

Annals of the Wanamaker System: Its Origin, its Principles, its Methods, 
and its Development in This and Other Cities. Philadelphia. 48 
pp. (This was republished in many editions and formats, either 
separately, or as a part of larger booklets, during many years.) 

Addresses in connection with the New York and Philadelphia Store 
buildings and celebrations, including the 1911 Jubilee speeches. 
These are contained in the Golden Book of the Wanamaker Stores. 
2 vols. Profusely illustrated. Philadelphia, 1911. 

Mission Work at Bethany. Philadelphia, 1870. 51 pp. 

Who Rang the Bell? Bethany Gleaner, May, 1887. 

An Argument in Support of the Limited Post and Telegraph, by the 
Postmaster-General, Together with Certain Appendices Relating to 
Postal Telegraphy. Washington, 1890. 223 pp. 

Additional Argument by the Postmaster-General in Favor of the Establish- 


474. JOHN WANAMAKER 


ment of Postal Savings Depositories, with Appendices. Washington, 
1892. 71 pp. 

Postal Laws and Regulations. Washington, 1893. 

Reports of the Postmaster-General. Washington, 1889, 1890, 1891, 
1892. 

Benjamin Harrison. Independent, March 21, 1901. 

Maxims of Life and Business. First published privately in 1916. Re- 
published, with introduction by Russell H. Conwell. New York, 
Harper & Brothers, 1923. (Japanese translation by J. Iseki. ‘Tokio, 
1924.) 

Prayers of John Wanamaker. F. H. Revell Co., New York, 1923. 159 
pp. A. Gordon MacLennan, editor. 

Prayers at Bethany Chapel. New York, 1925, 144 pp. A. Gordon 
MacLennan, editor. 

Address to Business Men’s League of Philadelphia, May 14, 1897. 
Public Opinion, May 27, 1897 (with editorial comment from ten 
widely scattered newspapers). 

Speeches of John Wanamaker in the Gubernatorial Campaign. Philadel- 
phia, 1898. (Published by the Business Men’s League.) Address 
to the Business Men’s League. 

Tour of the President to the Pacific Coast, April 14, to May 16, 1891. 
Itinerary, with map of United States outlining the trip. (Published 
privately by Mr. Wanamaker for the convenience of the President 
and his party.) 

Extracts from John Wanamaker’s speeches while Postmaster-General in 
Charles Hedges’ Compilation of the Speeches of Benjamin Harrison 
New York, 1892. 580 pages. 

(Mr. Wanamaker was also a prolific writer on mercantile prin- 
ciples and the particular policies of his stores. ‘These articles 
appeared in newspapers and in various forms of store advertising, 
such as anniversary bulletins, pamphlets, guides, booklets issued 
for special occasions, the Red Books, and the Golden Book. It 
is not always certain that everything of this nature bearing his 
signature was actually written by him. Only what we know to be 
his own is listed above. It is impracticable to include all the 
magazine articles. He wrote frequently on his travel impressions 
and on religious subjects in the various publications of Bethany 
Church, notably the Bethany Gleaner, the Living Link, and the 
Friendly Hand From Across the Sea; and also in the Sunday 
School Times, the Pennsylvania Herald, and the Lord’s Day 
Leader, Articles in the Christian Endeavor World, the War Cry 
(Salvation Army), and many other religious newspapers and 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 475 


periodicals are also attributed to him. A great deal of this kind 
of writing it is impossible to trace and identify.) 


Booxs anp ArtTicLEs ABoutT JoHN WANAMAKER 


The only biography published is “The Romantic Rise of a Great 
American” (New York, 1924. 250 pp.), by John Wanamaker’s old 
friend, Dr. Russell H. Conwell. 

Numerous magazine articles have appeared, the most important of 
which are: 

Botton, SaraH K. John Wanamaker. Wide Awake, January, 1884. 

BoorH, CoMMANDER EvancELinE. A Tribute. War Cry, January 6, 
1923. 

Brown, THompson. From Messenger Boy to Merchant Prince—A 
Romance of Business. Our Day, September, 1897. 

CaRPENTER, Frank G. A Talk with John Wanamaker. Syndicated Sun- 
day article, October 17, 1897. 

Crark, Francis E. Best Known Name in America. Christian Endeavor 
World, May 29, 1919. (Dr. Clark’s “Memories of Many Men in 
Many Lands” gives reminiscences of John Wanamaker.) 

Croti, P. C. John Wanamaker, Merchant and Philanthropist. Pennsy/- 
vania-German, January, 1908. 

Exuis, Wituiam T. John Wanamaker, Gave Sunday to Church and Sun- 
day School. North American, December 30, 1922. 

Faris, Joun T. The Errand Boy Who Changed Business Customs. Ov- 
ward, October 9, 1913. 

GLEED, CuHarues A. Captains of Industry: John Wanamaker. Cosmo- 
politan, May, 1902. 

Gorcan, Joun B. A Modern Business General. National Magazine, 
October, 1914. 

GrasER, FErpinaND H. John Wanamaker’s Anti-Quay Campaign. New 
Voice, February 4, 1899. 

Harre, ALtpHonsus P. The Conquerors of Business. System, October, 
1907. 

Howe, J. Oxin. Unique Writings of John Wanamaker. Dearborn In- 
dependent, March 17, 1923. 

Jones, H. S. A Short Sketch of a Busy Life. Pennsylvania-German, 
January, 1908. (This is exceedingly important, because Mr. Jones 
was Mr. Wanamaker’s friend and faithful secretary during the mid- 
dle period of his career.) 

O’FiaHERTY, James. Big Men in the Retail Game: 1.—John Wanamaker. 
Chips from the Blarney Stone, January, 1912. 

Pearce, McLrop M. A Sunday School Boy Who Became Merchant 
Prince. Young People’s Paper, April 8, 1923. 


476 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Pocug, Ropert. Mr. Wanamaker’s Bible Class—Its History and Methods. 
Michigan Sunday School Advance, September, 1905. 

Mr. Wanamaker at Prayer. Sunday School Times, January 7, 1923. 

Rice, Dr. Epwin W. Mr. Wanamaker as I knew Him. Sunday School 
World, March, 1923. 

Ritey, Ipa E. Biography of Mr. Wanamaker in ‘Famous Living Ameri- 
cans,” Green Castle, Ind., 1915. 

SANGSTER, Marcaret E. John Wanamaker at Eighty: A Personal Inter- 
view. Christian Herald, June 26, 1918. 

SEILHAMER, GEorGE O. Biographical Sketch in ‘Men of Mark in Phila- 
delphia,” contributed to Young’s Memorial History of Philadelphia, 
New York, 1898.. 

Sparks, Epwin Earte. Worth While Americans. Milton, Pa., 1921. 
(This is a schoo] textbook with chapter, ““The Messenger Boy and the 
Merchant Prince,” pp. 151-65.) 

STEWaRT, JANE A. Bethany and Its Founder. Home Herald, October 
ar, 1008: 

John Wanamaker’s Eight Decades. Christian Endeavor World, July 
Ei, -19T8; 

TuorNE, WituiamM Henry. How Wanamaker Missed the Presidency. 
Globe, June, 1901. (A contemptuous and unfriendly review of 
John Wanamaker’s political career by a former clergyman, who be- 
came a newspaper writer.) 

TuornLEY, Betty D. And the Merchant Princes Moved—Saving the 
Eldest Prince of Them All, Who insisted that New York go South— 
and New York Did. Vogue, January, 1923. 

TRUMBULL, CHarLes G. When Young John Wanamaker Went to Prayer 
Meeting. Sunday School Times, October 10, 1914. 

Some Memories of John Wanamaker. Sunday School Times, Decem- 
ber 30,1922. 

Wuirte, Rev. Wiruiam T., and Scott, Witu1am H. The Presbyterian 
Church in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1895. (J. W.’s Church 
activities are referred to on pages 49, 133-5, 277-83, 297-8, 299- 
300.) 

Wituets, Giison. A Sunday With John Wanamaker. Christian Herald, 
August 29, 1906. 

Younc, Rev. S. Epwarp. John Wanamaker as Religious Workers See 
Him. New York Observer, November 23, 1911. 

Space is lacking to list the anonymous articles and the editorial comment 





on John Wanamaker and his activities as a merchant, churchman, and 
politician—also his interest in social reform, art, music, education, and 
archaeology. There are notable comments, however, in the Outlook for 
January 13, 1900, March 6, 1909, December 27, 1922; Hémmelan, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 477 


Constanz, Switzerland, June 21, 1903; Green Years (Seoul, Korea), 
February, 1923; Dry Goods Economist, November 4, 1899, March 25, 
1911, and December 16, 1922; Current Opinion, March, 1922, and 
February, 1923; American Insurance Union Magazine, December, 1922; 
Annals Am. Acad. Pol. and Soc, Sc., March, 1902, and May, 1906; 
Architectural Record, March and June, 1911; Arena, August, 1899, and 
January to March, 1905; Bellman, December 30, 1911; British Ware- 
houseman, May 15, 1899 (“John Wanamaker, the Whitley of America,” 
with portrait); Central Christian Advocate, January 14, 1914; The 
Christian (London), February, 1924; Christian Endeavor World, June 
15, 1911; Dry Goods Chronicle, November, 1896; Eastern Underwriter, 
June 6, 1924; Everybody’s, September, 1907; Floral Life, August, 1903; 
Furniture Trade Review, November, 1896; Furniture World, November 
2, 1911; Gardeners Chronicle, May, 1920, and May and June, 1922; 
Gospel Messenger, Edinburgh, Vol. 38, No. 452; House Beautiful, 
March, 1912; Independent, February 7, 1916, and June 19, 1920; 
Insurance Field (Louisville), September, 1913; Keystone (Masonic 
Weekly), September 3, 1904; Leidsche Courant (Holland), January 4, 
1915; Leslie's Weekly, February 15, 1912; Moody’s Magazine, February, 
1914; Musical America, November 11, 1916; Musical Courier Extra, 
July 26, 1902, April 13, August 17, September 8, 1917; Nankwaino 
Flikari (Japan), spring of 1915; Nation, June 11, July 2, and July 16, 
1891 (attack on John Wanamaker for part in Keystone Bank affair) ; Neva 
(St. Petersburg), October 4, 1909; New Era Magazine, September, 1921; 
Newspaperdom, April 25, 1918; Odd Fellows Siftings, September, 1911; 
Old Bullion (Chemical Bank of New York), February 25, 1922; Pennsyl- 
vania Herald, January, 1923; Pottery and Glass, April and November, 
1911; Praeco Latinus, November, 1899; Printers Ink, May 1, 1901, and 
October 31, 1912; Public Ledger (Monthly Retail Edition), October 8, 
1918; Publisher’ Weekly, December, 1922; Satire, May 25, 1912; Satur- 
day Evening Post, September, 1900, and November 26, 1921; School and 
Society, April 15, 1916; Success, August, 1900 (Mr. Wanamaker in colors 
on cover as a young man delivering merchandise in wheelbarrow); Sua- 
day School Work (Nashville, Tenn.), December 15, 1906; Sunday School 
Worker, February, 1920; Sunday School World, March, 1923; System, 
October, 1907, October, 1913; World Retailer, June, 1920; University 
of Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, January, April, May, 1go1. 

In 1921 the committee of Philadelphians, headed by the mayor, which 
arranged the celebration in honor of Mr. Wanamaker’s sixty years in 
business, issued a booklet bound in morocco, giving an account of the 
“Testimonial Luncheon to John Wanamaker by His Fellow Citizens, 
April 26, 1921.” This contains a photograph and has a chronological 
page of the high lights in his life, which is headed ‘Milestones.’ 


478 JOHN WANAMAKER 


PUBLICATIONS OF WANAMAKER & Brown, JoHN WANAMAKER & Co., THE 
Grand Depot, AND THE WANAMAKER STORES 
IN PHILADELPHIA AND NEw YorK 


These run into hundreds of titles. All of them are interesting to the 
student of modern advertising methods. But we list only those that are 
important from the historical point of view: 

Everybody’s Journal. This was the title of a paper published when Wana- 
maker was a boy, and was revived as the name of the monthly bulletin 
of Wanamaker & Brown in the late seventies and the early eighties. 
In 1899, John Wanamaker founded Everybody's Magazine, which 
he sold after four years. 

Methods of Business of the Largest Establishment in the World for the 
Manufacture and Sale of Men’s Wear. Philadelphia, 1876. 
Printed at our own steam-power printing office. One million copies 
distributed gratuitously.” (This was the first of what afterwards 
came to be called the Red Books, which were issued from time to 
time up to 1909.) 

Catalogue and Guide for Shopping by Mail. Philadelphia, 1879. 89 
pp. Ill. 

Book News Monthly, Started August 30, 1881. Discontinued August, 
1918. 

What Is the Best Way to Wait on a Customer? 1882. (Prize essays.) 

Philadelphia Store News. Vol. I, No. I of this publication was in Sep- 
tember, 1883. It was discontinued after a short time, but was re- 
vived; and the name was used long afterwards in the full page adver- 
tisements in the newspapers. 

Oak Hall Advertising Sketches. How They May be Used by Other 
Advertisers. 1884. 129 pp. 

A Souvenir of the Constitutional Centennial. 1887. 

Three September Days. 1887. 

Inspectors’ Manual. 1890. 52 pp. 

Exposition Journal. Weekly from September to November, 1889. 

A Little Handbook of Philadelphia Together With Certain Annals of the 
Wanamaker System. Philadelphia and New York, 1899. 52 pp. 
Ill. 

Dewey Days. New York, 1899. 

Curlyhead’s Dickery-Docks; Curlyhead’s Sandman. (Ill.)  Phila., 1900 
and 1901. 

Guide to Philadelphia and the Wanamaker Store. With large map. 
1901—reprinted in successive years. 

A Short History of the United States: With an Interwoven Chronology 
of the John Wanamaker Business, Together with Other Historical 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 479 
and Economic Data. Published by Philadelphia Store in 1904. 


Later editions. 

Anniversary Herald. Published for many years in the month of March, 
beginning with 1904. (This is sometimes called Wanamaker 
Herald.) 

A Short History of the French Revolution. Philadelphia, 1906. 32 pp. 
With reproductions of portraits and other objects in the Wanamaker 
collection. 

Flags of America: From the Time of Columbus to the Present Day, 
Philadelphia, 1907. 24 pp. III. in color. 

The Wanamaker House of Artistic Suggestion, by Elbert Hubbard. New 
WOrks .OO 7 Ua 2npin 

Helpful Hints for Business Helpers, by Elbert Hubbard. East Aurora, 
New York, 1907. 

A Dozen and Two Pastels in Prose, by Elbert Hubbard. East Aurora, 
New York, 1907. 

Wanamaker Primers. “Philadelphia.” “The Rule of Four.” “The 
North American Indian.” ‘Hiawatha Produced in Life.” ‘‘Abra- 
ham Lincoln.” These were published in many large editions from 
1908 to 1911. 

The Old A. T. Stewart Building and the New Wanamaker’s an Exclu- 
sive Store for Women. New York, 1908. 16 pp. 

Jubilee Night: A Personal Tribute to the Honorable John Wanamaker by 
His Entire Business Family. Philadelphia, 1911. 48 pp. 

Golden Book of the Wanamaker Stores. Philadelphia, 1911-13. 2 vols. 
Ill. 

The Wanamaker 1912 Safeguards and Aids to Health. (The only gen- 
eral store manual in the extensive list of the United States Depart- 
ment of Labor bibliography of books and periodicals on accident and 
disease prevention in industry.) 

Safeguards and Aids to the Well-being of Employees. Philadelphia and 
New York, October, 1913. 27 full page illustrations. 

A Friendly Guide Book to Philadelphia. Several editions, beginning in 
IQI4. 

The John Wanamaker Commercial Institute. Philadelphia, 1915. 72 
pp. Ill. 

Manual of Commands for Use in Instruction and Reference Prepared for 
the Cadets of the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute. Philadel- 
phia and New York, 1916. 64 pp. 

Furniture: The Story of a Great Industry and a Great Sale. Philadel- 
phia, 1917. 24 pp. 

The World’s Greatest Organ. Philadelphia (Second edition), 1917. 


480 JOHN WANAMAKER 


Members of the Wanamaker Store Family in the War Service. Philadel- 
phia and New York, 1918. 48 pp. 

The John Wanamaker Store Army. Philadelphia, 1918. 

The Meadowbrook Club Year Book. Philadelphia, 1921. 238 pp. Ill. 
(This has been issued annually, as well as a year book of the Mill- 
rose Club in New York.) 

Broadcasting the World’s Greatest Organ. Philadelphia, 1922. 16 pp. 
Ij]. 

Visitors’ Guide to Wanamaker Store. Philadelphia, 1922. Ill. 

Centennial Book of the John Wanamaker New York Store (Formerly 
A. T. Stewart, 1823-1923, and a Tercentenary Review of New 
York City 1626-1926). New York, 1923. 95 pp. Second edi- 
tion 1924. ; 

Wanamaker Firsts: 1838-1924, Philadelphia, 1924. 93 pp. (A list of 
“firsts, compiled from ms. sources, appeared in the New York 
papers on April 5, 1924.) 

The Wanamaker Home Budget Service, Including Furnishing Out of 
Income upon Establishing of Credit. New York, 1924. Sixth edi- 
tion. 32 pp. 

The Observances of Mourning. New York and Philadelphia. 32 pp. 

How to Care for the Baby: Suggestions for Young Mothers. 

Historic Periods in China and Objects of Art Belonging to Them. New 
York and Philadelphia, 1924. 

Tercentenary Book, John Wanamaker, New York, inaugurating the new 
Wanamaker building and a Tercentenary Pictorial Pageant of New 
York—The Titan City. New York, October, 1925—64 pages; 
second edition in November; third edition in January, 1926. 


ArTIcLEs ABoUT WANAMAKER COLLECTIONS AND LINDENHURST 


Catalogue of Paintings, by Vacslav Brozik. 

Chuirazzi of Fils. Reproduction of the Bronzes Found at Pompeii and 
Herculaneum, in the National Museum at Naples, Made Upon the 
Order of John Wanamaker of Philadelphia for the Archzlogical 
Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Naples and St. Louis, 
1904. 

Culin, Stewart. A Summer Trip Among the Western Indians: The Wana- 
maker Expedition. Philadelphia, 1901. 

Edson, Mira. The Wanamaker Gardens. House Beautiful, March, 1912. 

Lindenhurst Paintings. Catalogue of the collection of old masters, with 
over one hundred reproductions. Privately printed. 

Meyer, Frank B. Rhododendrons and Azaleas in the Garden. Gardeners’ 
Chronicle, May and June, 1922. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY A481 


Rothe, Richard. The Rock Garden at Lindenhurst. Gardeners Chronicle, 
May, 1920. 

Wagner, Charles. My Impressions of America. New York, 1906. (De- 
scription of Mr. Wanamaker’s hospitality and of Lindenhurst.) 


aie 


Rt 
ty } ; AN, 


‘ie hae aes 6 nai AE 2 PG 





INDEX 





INDEX 


Abolition Movement, i, 15, 74, 314 
Advertising, see Wanamaker Adver- 
tising and Oak Hall Advertising 
Advertising Clubs of the World, Dal- 
las Convention, i, 94; Philadelphia 
Convention, li, 19, 26 

Albany Convention, i, 133 

Aldrich, Le bey 170k 

Altgeld, Governor, i, 346 

American Bankers Association, ii, 224 

American Church, Paris, ii, 168 

American Express Co., 1, 277, 283 

American Library Association, ii, 411 

American Line, i, 317-18 

American Sunday School Union, i, 
191, 233 

American University of Trade and 
Applied Commerce, ii, 288-9 

Ames Building, Boston, ii, 202 

Ancestry, importance of good, i, 3 

Anderson, D. L., li, 222-3 

Anti-Saloon League, ii, 311 

Arnold, Constable & Co., i, 176 

Appeles’ Motto, i, 322 

Armistice, ii, 410, 425-6 

Armour Institute, Chicago, 11, 293 

Athens, ii, 54 

Atkinson, Wilmer, i, 198-9 

Atlantic City, ii, 144, 167, 348, 389, 
452 


Bader Farm, ii, 411 

Bailey, Banks & Biddle, i, 167 
Bailey, Joshua L., i, 134 
Bainbridge of Newcastle, i, 92 
Baptist Church, i, 1, 30 
Barclay, Florence, i, 209-10 
Barnes, Rev. Albert, i, 191 
Barnum, PST; 1,154; 230, 265 
Barrie, J. M., i, 97) 210 

Beck, James M., ii, 327 


Belgium, King and Queen of, ii, 287, 
424; violation of neutrality of, ii, 
370; relief for, ii, 372-5 

Bell Telephone Co., ii, 88 

Bennett, Arnold, i, 200 

Bennett, Colonel, i, 26-9, 34, 63, 71 

Bennett, James Gordon, ii, 121, 245- 
6, 257 

Berlin, i, 2723 ii, 199 

Bernhardt, Sarah, ii, 160 

Bethany Bible Union, i, 3773 ii, 50, 
55) 138, 179, 308, 331-2 

Bethany Brotherhood, ii, 333-5, 337- 
8, 411, 457 

Bethany Chapel, i, 54-5 

Bethany Church, i, 7, 54-5, 82, 117, 
E245) ES 7426-94) 11, SZ, 1189s. 204; 
315) 328-44, 346-7, 416, 448, 451 

Bethany College, i, 1463 ii, 291-4, 
337 

Bethany Collegiate Presbyterian 
Church, ii, 341-4, 459 

Bethany Mission, i, 50-55 

Bethany Mother’s Day, i, 242 

Bethany name used in West, i, 193 

Bethany publications, i, 201; ii, 55-6, 
Ja 

Bethany Sunday School, i, 8, 50-56, 
57-60, 75> 78, 128, 133, 181-194, 
207-8, 248, 321-2, 352, 3783 il, 
222-7, 305-6, 310-11, 324, 328- 
44, 357, 409-10 

Bethany Temple, ii, 311, 341, 347 

Bethany Tract Repository, i, 197 

Bethany, Wanamaker’s letters from 
Europe, i, 2493 ii, 168, 173, 325; 
333-4) 338-9 

Better roads movement, i, 282 

Biarritz, i, 3833 1, 1519, 162-3, 167- 
70, 172 


485 


486 


Bible, place of in Wanamaker’s life, 
i, 10, 30, 623; importance of, i, 
195, 208, 355 

Bibliothéque Nationale, ii, 86 

Bingham, General, i, 276-7 _ 

Biography, sources of, i, 81-2; Wan- 
amaker’s taste in, 1, 249 

Black Friday, i, 118 

Blaine, James G., 1, 248, 255, 262, 
277) 332, 336-7, 340 

Blankenburg, Rudolph, i, 383 

Bliss, Po Ps, 14,3414 

Boardman, Mabel, ii, 372 

Board of Education, Philadelphia, 

li, 300-304, 464 

Book News Monthly, i, 200-201 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, i, 210; il, 76, 
426 

Bonar, Horatius, i, 121 

Bonheur, Rosa, i, 3253 il, 74 

Bon Marché, i, 92, 124, 131, 2373 
Lt, Ge et 

Booth, Commander Evangeline, 

li, 350 

Booth, General, ii, 314, 350 

Boston, rumor of extension to, li, 46, 
102 

Boucicault, Aristide, i, 125, 131 

Bouguereau, i, 3253 Ul, 74 

Brainard, Clinton T., i, 205 

Breton, Jules, ii, 75 

Bretton Woods, N. H., ii, 251, 451 

Brice, Senator, 1, 268-9 

Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip, 
li, 337) 350 

Brown, Nathan, i, 63-71, 110-11 

Brown, Thomas, i, 57 

Browning, Robert, i, 302 

Brozik, ii, 79 

Bryan, William Jennings, ii, 7, §2, 
237, 458 

Bryn Mawr College, ii, 389 

Buchanan, James, i, 29 

Buenos Aires, ii, 194 

Budapest, architectural exhibits, ii, 
194 


INDEX 


Bull Moose Movement, 1, 73, 269, 
3673 il, 255, 398 

Bull Run, Battle of, i, 70, 75 

Burnham, Daniel H., ii, 46, 
202-6 

Business Men’s War Council (1918), 
1, 10 

Butler, Nicholas Murray, ii, 395 


1995 


Cesar, Julius, i, 96; i, 76 

Calvinism, i, 322 

Cameron, Senator, i, 79, 263, 325, 
336, 349, 381 

Canada, i, 150, 3103 li, 175-6, 238 

Cape May Point, 1, 247, 3353 il, 136, 
450 

Carlsbad, i, 344, 3525 il, 50-51, 55, 
59, 68, 151, 153, 156-7, 162-7, 
333, 338, 368 

Carlton Club, ii, 157-8, 166, 177, 
240 

Carnegie, Andrew, ii, 83 

Catholic Church, i, 350; ii, 64, 68, 
314 

Catholic University in Washington, 
ii, 230 

Cavour, i, 299 

Centennial Exhibition, i, 102, 109, 
140-42, 144-150, 169, 181-2, 192, 
207, 217, 3783 il, 16, 87, 273, 
300, 322, 345 

Centennial of Adoption of Constitu- 
tion, 1, 236-7 

Central Park, New York, ii, 2, 151, 
183-4 

Century Magazine, ii, 17 

Chain stores, i, 128, 167 

Chamberlain, Joseph, ii, 159 

Chambers, John, i, 31-4, 40, 59, 82, 
141, 253 

Chambers Memorial 
331-2, 337-41, 347 

Chambersburg, Pa., i, 16, 37, 61 

Chauchard, i, 125, 131 

Chestnut Street Store (first), see 
Wanamaker, John, & Co. 


Church, © ii, 


INDEX 


Chicago, i, 35; ii, 346; fire of 1871, 
il, 202 

Chicago Convention (1888), ii, 256; 
(10 ba) gill) // 24492 5090025031) 2865 
450; (1916), ii, 389-92 

Chicago, rumor of extension to, il, 
46, 102 

Chicago World’s Fair, i, 309, 3433 


li, 76, 452 
Childs, George W., i, 136-7, 170, 
192, (2215) 24.9650; 12 963) 11,15164 


Chilean crisis, i, 332 
Choate, Joseph H., ii, 158-9, 379, 


398 

Christ Church College, Oxford, ii, 
437 

Christian Commission (Civil War), i, 
60, 78-9 


Christian Endeavor Movement, ii, 
55, 179) 334, 350 

City Hall, Philadelphia, i, 134, 142, 
377, 395-63 11, 223 

Civil Service Issue, i, 298-303, 327 

Civil War, i, 24, 60, 64-5, 67, 69- 
70) 73-80, 83, 118, 160, 231, 255, 
321, 324-5, 3595 Ul, 10, 46, 368, 
399) 402, 404, 414, 426, 455, 469 

lation bit tom 

Clark, E. W., 1, 383 

Clark, Dr. Francis E., ii, 55, 334-5, 
350 

Clarkson, General, i, 260, 264-67, 
298, 300 

Clement, Samuel M., ii, 223 

Cleveland, Frances Folsom, i, 257, 
328 

Cleveland, Grover, i, 151, 255-6, 258, 
262, 281, 337) 344-5) 3843 il, 348 

Cleveland, Ohio, i, 16, 3123 ii, 47, 
102 

Clews, Henry, ii, 247 

Collier’s Weekly, ii, 393 

Cologne, i, 123; ii, 55, 83 

Columbia University, ii, 395 

Comegys, B. B., i, 192 

Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, 
ll, 244 


487 


Congregational Church, i, 31 

Congress, obstructionist tactics in, 1, 
294-7) 306-7 

Congressional campaign (1894), i, 
825 (1902), i, 369-70 

Connaught, Duke of, ii, 175 

Connor, Ralph, i, 209 

Constitution, safeguarding the, 
1, 190} il, 249 

Cooke, Jay, i, 128, 136; ii, 407 

Coolidge, Calvin, i, 96; ii, 249 

Cooper Union, i, 733 ii, 10, 398-9 

Cope, Caleb, i, 28 

Corot, ii, 75 

Cortelyou, George B., ii, 110 

Courtesy Cards, ii, 268-9 

Couzens, Senator, ii, 93 

Croker, Richard, i, 54 

Cromer, Lord, 11, 175 

Crystal Palace, London, i, 122, 1533 
il, 68, 174 

Cuban question, i, 371-2, 376 

Cunard Line, i, 122, 131; ii, 161 

Curzon, Lord and Lady, ii, 62-3, 161 

Cuyler, Theodore L., ii, 50 


Daniels, Josephus, ii, 253 

Dayton, Ohio, i, 4-5, 17 

Declaration of Independence, i, 73, 
160; ii, 309, 422, 425 

Delaware River, i, 2, 8, 12-13, 1343 
247) 331 

Department Store, a misnomer for 
Wanamaker business, i, 166-7 

Department stores, see General stores 

Depew, Chauncey W., i, 336 

Derby, Lord, ii, 161 

Deshong family, i, 5-6, 8 

Détaille, ii, 74 

Devlin & Co., i, 232 

Diaz, General, ii, 424 

Dickens, Charles, i, 11, 209 

Dickey, Rev. Charles A., ii, 163, 338 

Dobson, James, i, 30 

Dolan, Thomas, i, 258, 380-23 
AE 08 Be, 


488 


Douglas, Stephen A., i, 75 

“Down Stairs Store,” 11, 211 

Drexel, A. J., i, 136, 1923 il, 164 

Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, ii, 293 

Dry Goods Economist, i, 92; medal, 
ii, 189-90 

Dunn, Charles B., 11, 220 

Dutch Reformed Church, 1, 1 


Easton;iha.jii,2 
Edict of Nantes, revocation of, i, 6 
Edison, Thomas A., 1, 163, 217-19, 
268; il, 87, 382-3, 464, 469 
Edward VII, i, 146; li, 69, 168-70 
Egan, Dr. Maurice Francis, 11, 230 
Egypt, visit to, ii, 53, 60, 67 
Electricity in storekeeping, i, 163-4, 
217-2131, B95 207,278 
Elkins, Stephen B., i, 258, 277-8, 337 
Emergency Aid Fund, ii, 378 
Employees, give dinner to Wana- 
maker at Bellevue (1884), i, 251 


Employees, speeches to, i, 169-70, 
208 
Employees, Wanamaker’s relations 


with, ii, 112, 259-81 

Ems, il, 167-8, 172-4 

Encyclopedia Britannica, i, 204-5 

Fquitable Life Insurance Co., ii, 230 

Equitable Pioneers’ Society, see Roch- 
dale Society 

Europe, trips to, 1, 117, 127,131, 151, 
248-9; il, 47-70, 151-170, 171- 
180 

Everybody’s Journal, i, 65, 1973 il, 
17 

Everybody’s Magazine, i, 92, 197-8, 
2003 li, 17, 111 


Fairbanks, Charles W., ii, 392 

Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, i, 88, 
144, 149, 155-6, 159 

Fales, Lieutenant T. B. Wanamaker, 
ii, 421 

Fales, Mrs., see Wanamaker, Eliza- 


beth 


INDEX 


Farm Journal, i, 198-9; ii, 16-17 

Federal Reserve Act, i, 2863 li, 393 

Fidelity Life Insurance Co., li, 231-2 

Field, Leiter & Co., i, 125, 151 

Field, Marshall, i, 92, 97, 125, 167-8, 
232, 237-8, 3435 I, 3, 24, 46, 48, 
195, 205-6, 275, 3233 new Store, 
IRe2O¢ eos 

Filene, E. A., li, 252, 254 

Filene’s, Boston, ii, 275 

First Penny Savings Bank, li, 222-7, 
337) 462 

Fischer, William G., i, 135 

Fitler, Edwin H., i, 383 

Florence, Italy, ii, 54, 68, 152 

Florida vacations, il, 144, 206, 225, 
286, 288, 328, 338, 344, 404, 415; 
429, 442-3, 448-58, 460 

Foch, Marshal, 1i, 424 

Ford Airplanes, ii, 92-7 

Ford, Henry, i, 282; ii, 92-98, 381-4, 
469 

Ford Motor Co., ii, 93-4 

Forster, Rudolph, ii, 247 

Fort Sumter, i, 65 

Fort Wayne, Indiana, i, 16-17, 19 

Francis, David R., li, 239 

Franklin, Benjamin, i, 379; il, 359) 
422, 425 

Franklin Institute, i, 130; i, 87 

Free Silver Movement, ii, 7, 91 

Frelinghuysen, Secretary, i, 325 

French, Howard B., ii, 246 

Friendly Inn, ii, 307, 314-19 

Frieseke, F. C., ii, 80 

Fritel, Pierre, ii, 76-7 

Fry, Mrs., see Wanamaker, Mary 

Furness, Horace Howard, i, 102 


Gale, Zona, i, 210 

Garrett, Robert, i, 248 

Gary, Judge, ii, 128 

General stores, origin of, i, 92, 124-73 
character of, i, 167 

George V., King, 11, 171, 180, 188, 
465 


INDEX 


Gettysburg, Battle of, i, 79; ii, 4215 
speech, Lincoln’s, 1, 77 

Girard College, i, 70 

Girard, Stephen, i, 235, 3793 11, 407 

Golden Jubilee (1911), i, 8, 293; ii, 
36-7, 171, 181-91, 429 

Goldsmith, Oliver, ii, 466 

Gospel Hymns, i, 134-5, 138-9, 
185-6, 196, 208; il, 309, 414 

Gough, John B., ii, 308 

Gould, Jay, i, 118, 277, 291, 329, 
342 

Grand Army of the Republic, i, 77, 
207, 255 

Grand Depot, i, 140-152 

Grant, U.°S.}) 1°77, 137, 146, 155-6, 
192, 203-4, 231, 360; li, 6, 11, 15, 
3,216; 271 

_Gray’s Ferry, 1, 5-7, 9, 12-13 

Grayson, David, i, 210 

Green, Mrs. Hettie, ii, 4 

Grey, Sir Edward, ii, 255 

Gridiron Club dinners, ii, 185, 238 

Guildhall Coronation Painting, ii, 
174, 463 


Hadley, A. T., ii, 248 

Hall of Fame, ii, 366 

Hamburg, il, 55, 137 

Hamburg-American Line, i, 309; ii, 
60, 178, 375 

Hann, Hattie Robinson, i, 4 

Hanna, Mark A., i, 348, 3643 ii, 252 

Harding, Warren G., i, 2543; ii, 249, 
425-6 

Harper’s Weekly, i, 205, 270, 325 

Harrison, Benjamin, i, 7, 247, 256- 
70, 294, 298-302, 324-8, 332-7, 
380; ii, 330 

Harrison, Mrs. Benjamin, i, 
= eo ae 

Harrison’s Cabinet, i, 262-272, 291, 
321, 325-9, 336; il, 91, 185, 221, 
345 

Harrison, Provost Charles Custis, ii, 
85 

Harrity, William F., i, 341, 384 


247) 


489 


Hart, John S., i, 191 

Harvard University, i, 3513 ii, 203, 
287 

Harvey, George, i, 205 

Haviland potteries, Limoges, ii, 172 

Hayes, Rutherford B., i, 231 

Hays, Will H., ii, 395 

Heaton, Henniker, ii, 69, 154-5, 157, 
162 

Hennepin, Father, i, 35 

Henry Clay Literary Club, i, 206 

Heinz, H. J., ui, 353-4 

Hériot et Chauchard, i, 131 

Hiawatha, i, 35-6 

High cost of living, ii, 428-38 

Hill, David B., i, 346 

Hillman, John F., i, 144, 234 

Hinckley, Robert H., i, 143 

Hitchcock, Secretary, i, 294 

Hobson, Richmond P., i, 376 

Holidays for employees, i, 127 

Holland, i, 1 

Holy Land, visit to, ii, 52-4 

Honduras, i, 315 

Hood, Bonbright & Co., i, 239 

Hoover, Herbert, ii, 327 

Horney, Thomas T., ii, 316-19 

Houghton, J. R., i, 64-7, 83, 89 

Huguenots, i, 6, 313 il, 462 

Hughes, Charles E., i, 73; it; 114, 
230) 257, 390-403 

Hugo, Victor, i, 210 

Hunt, Professor T. W., i, 122 

Hunterdon County, New Jersey, i, 
2-4 

Hurlock, William J., i, 9-10 

Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, ii, 312 

Hyatt, General, ii, 299 


Independence Hall, i, 73-4, 156, 1603 
il, 422 

India, visit to, ii, 60-70, 181, 202 

Indiana in 1850, 1, 15-21, 35}; revis- 
ited, i, 264-7, 3353 i, 348 

Indianapolis, i, 264-7, 335 

Indians, 1, 16-17, 20, 35-6 

Inge, Dean, ii, 174 


490 


Ingelow, Jean, i, 97 

International Postal Union, i, 316 

International Sunday School Conven- 
tion (Washington), ii, 179 

Inquirer, i, 67 

I. OO. Fy 11,146,150 

Island Heights Camp, J. W. C. L, 
il, 287 


Japan, interest in, ii, 66, 185, 354-53 
Emperor and Empress of, ii, 447 

Jaynes Hall, i, 35, 196 

Jefferson, Thomas, ii, 400, 422, 425 

Jenks, William H., i, 383 

Jesus del Sol, General, i, 372-3 

Joffre, Marshal, ii, 287, 410 

Johnstown Flood, i, 340 

Johnston, General George D., i, 327 

Jordan, Marsh & Co., ii, 46 

Judean Sunday School Society, i, 183 


Keene, John F., i, 135 

King Edward, ii, 158, 162 
Knights of Columbus, ii, 411 
Knox, Senator, ii, 424-5 
Kochersperger family, i, 5-6 
Krauskopf, Rabbi, ii, 148 


Ladies’ Journal, i, 199-200 

Landor, Walter Savage, i, 338 

Landreth Public School, i, 11-12, 15; 
il, 300 

Landreth Sunday School, i, 9-10, 31 

Lane, David H., ii, 254 

Lansing, Secretary, ii, 430 

Lea, Henry C., i, 383 

League of Nations propaganda, ii, 
419 

League to Enforce Peace, ii, 378-9 

Leiter, Levi Z., i, 2373 ii, 63 

Leslie’s Weekly, ii, 239 

Lexow Committee, i, 346 

Libbey, William, i, 67, 
175-63 il, 2, § 

Liberty Loans, i, 
411-16, 435 

Library of Congress, i, 104 


120-2 I, 


167, 200; Ui, 


INDEX 


Life insurance, importance of, i, 
3445 ll, 227-235 

Lincoln, Abrahan, i, 65, 73-5) 775 
80, 133, 160, 207-8, 254-5, 345, 
360; 11, 185, 308-09, 398-400, 421, 
424, 427 

Lincoln, Robert T., ii, 398 

Lindenhurst, i, 26, 143, 210-11, 
243-8, 251, 336; Ul, 72, 79, 83, 
137-44, 146, 151, 183, 213, 331-2, 
465 

Lippincott, Barclay, i, 25-6 

Liverpool, i, 123, 1343 i, 55, 161, 
179 

Livingstone, Robert, i, 153 

London general merchants, i, 92, 97, 
IZA (1265012 $15, 12625 6200) 2398 aly 
469 

London, visits to, i, 121-7, 182, 2483 
li, 49-50, 59, 68-9, 79, 151, 153-5 

Long, Henry, i, 9 

Longfellow, Henry W., i, 35 

Lord’s Day Alliance, ii, 322, 464 

Louis Philippe, ii, 148 

Louisiana State Lottery, i, 273, 277, 
290, 313-15 

Louvre, Grands Magasins du, i, 102, 
124, 1213 Up 

Lowell, A. Lawrence, ii, 378 

Lowrie, Rev: S. T., 1, 1625) 1215715%; 
173-55 ll, 85, 152-3 

Lusitania, sinking of, ii, 379-81, 393, 
396, 424 

Luther, Martin, i, 210-11; ii, 139, 
325 

Lutheran Church, i, 9-10, 31 


McAdoo, W. G., ii, 252-3, 397 

McLeod, Mrs. Norman, see Wana- 
maker, Lillie 

McClure, Colonel A. K., i, 260 

McClure Newspaper Syndicate, i, 205 

McClure, S. S., 1, 283, 3323 il, 11, 435 
175 

McCreery & Co., i, 176 

McKinley, William, i, 337, 347-50, 
364-68, 3713 li, 3, 7) 52 


INDEX 


McNeille’s Folly, 1, 64, 89, 114, 127 

Macy, Rowland H., 1, 167 

Macy, R. H., & Co., ii, 90 

Mail Subsidies Act of 
317-19 

Maine, sinking of, i, 373 

Mansion House, London, ii, 172-80 

Manufacturers’ Club, Philadelphia, 
li, 389 

Marconi, ti, 162, 245-6, 469 

Marienbad, ii, 244 

Masaryk, Thomas G., ii, 422 

Masonic Fraternity, 1, 350; ii, 72, 
145-50, 181, 334 

Meadowbrook, ii, 139, 213 

Meadowbrook Athletic Association, 
ll, 276-7 

Ménagére, Paris, ii, 199 

Merchant Marine, Wanamaker’s sup- 
port of, i, 316-195 li, 375-77 

Mercier, Cardinal, ii, 424 

Methodist Church, i, 30, 193 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, ii, 72, 
74 

Metternich, Count, ii, 56 

Mexico, i, 315, 3433 11, 49, 258, 286, 
387, 393, 402, 409, 452, 459 

Meyer, Secretary, i, 281, 293 

Miami Valley, i, 4 

Mid-European Union, ii, 422 

Miller, Dr. James R., i, 343-43 


1891, I, 


il, 298 

Millet, ii, 75 

Millrose Athletic Association, ii, 
276-7 


Million Dollar Sales (1917-18), 
il, 418-19, 431 

Minnesota in 1857, 1, 35-37 

Mississippi River, 1, 36 

Moody, Dwight L., i, 133-40, 196 

Moody and Sankey Revival, i, 133- 
40, 153, 158, 232 

Moore, J. Hampton, il, 249, 257 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, ii, 159 

Morgenthau, Henry, ii, 4-5 

Morris, Robert, i, 235, 3793 ll, 407 

Morse, Stephen B., i, 289 


493 


Morton, Levi P., i, 298, 325-8, 346 
Mott, John R., ii, 65, 70, 351 
Munkaczy, i, 3263 ii, 75-7, 139 
Murillo, ii, 82, 139 
Murphy, Francis, ii, 308 
Mutual Life Insurance 
229-31 
Mutual Life Policy Holders’ Associa- 


tion, il, 229-30 


Contras, 


Naples, ii, 54, 60, 67, 84, 153 

Nast, Thomas, ii, 414 

National Defense Conference (1915), 
ii, 384 

National Farmers Congress, i, 281 

National Grange, i, 281 

National Guard, i, 373-43 ii, 287, 
299, 409 

National Life Underwriters Conven- 
tion (1895), ii, 227-8 

National Security League, ii, 379 

Neff, John A., i, 9-10, 22-23 

Neuville, de, ii, 74 

Nevin, William L., ii, 112 

New Orleans Convention (1860), i, 
45, §8, 1173 il, 351 

New York, growth of after 1896, ii, 
106-9; peculiar stimulus of, ii, 1-2 

New York American, ii, 381, 396 

New York Convention (1861), i, 78, 
117 

New York Evening Journal, ii, 379 

New York Life Insurance Co., ii, 230 

New York general merchants, i, 213, 
2935 ll, 11, 44, 190, 428, 433 

New York Herald, i, 205, 2683 il, 
121, 256, 382, 384, 412, 458 

New York Numismatic Society, ii, 
190 

New York Times, ii, 256, 359 

New York Tribune, i, 92 

New York University, ii, 366 

New York World, i, 92, 271-2, 368, 
3743 li, 164-5, 203, 393, 433 

North American, i, 353, 397-83 il, 
134) 239-41, 323-4 


492 


Northeast High School, Philadelphia, 
li, 303, 387 

North Cape Cruise, il, 55-8, 102, 333 

North German Lloyd, i, 37, 3093 1i, 
55-8, 60, 178, 245-6, 375 


Oak Hall, ii, 186, 227, 272. See also 
Wanamaker & Brown 

Oak Hall business policies, i, 81-94, 
145, 160; advertising, i, 96-109, 
1793 ll, 14-15 

Ogden, Robert C., i, 110, 136, 197-8, 
232-5, 238, 322, 352, 3803 il, 2-3, 
8, 32, 91, 114, 133-4, 169, 181, 
202, 262, 264 

Ogden, Robert Curtis, 
il, 264 

Ogilvie, Margaret, i, 96, 210 

Ourcq, Battle of, ii, 421 


Association, 


Pacific Mail Steamship Co., i, 318 

Palatinate, i, 1-2 

Palmer, Potter, 1,237 

Panama Canal, ii, 395 

Panicvot 11859,\1;.28 

Panic of 1873, i, 128 

Panicrot 28935 be S634 42) 11, 252 

Panic of 19075%1,/.1735 2875. 3573-35 
113-135, 169, 188, 202 

Parcels Post, i, 278-84, 290, 2933 
il, 190 

Paris Exposition (1889), ii, 76 

Paris general merchants, i, 92, 97, 
1O2, (124, (1265.35. 1591.02511 0651237 5 
il, 468 

Paris Peace Conference, ii, 423-5 

Paris Salons, ii, 72, 77-80, 157 

Paris, visits to, 1, 123-5, 131, 2493 il, 
46, 51, 59, 68, 151, 163, 167-8, 
B25, on 

Paris World’s Fair (1869), i, 153 

Paton, John G., ii, 49 

Patrons of Husbandry, i, 281 

Patton, President F. L., ii, 348 

Pearson, A. .T.., :1,.193 

Peirce School, Philadelphia, ii, 297 


INDEX 


Penn, William, i, 379; ii, 294 

“Penn” (William Perrine), i, 368-69 

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 
li, 72 

Pennsylvania Blue Law of 1794, ii, 
325 

Pennsylvania, Colonial, i, 1-4 

Pennsylvania Dutch, i, 2-3, 253 

Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Cam- 
paign (1898), i, 37, 354-3625 
(1889), i, 340 

Pennsylvania Military Academy, ii, 
299-300 

Pennsylvania Railroad, 1, 16, 130-1, 
133-4) 143, 149, 217, 3933 Ul, 103, 
247 

Pennsylvania Society dinner, 
York, ii, 237 

Pennsylvania State Sabbath School 
Association, i, 248, 366, 375; 
li, 312, 352-3, 425 

Penrose, Boies, i, 349-543 il, 241-2 

Pentecost, Dr. George F., ii, 343 

Peoples’ Palace, London, ii, 293 

Pepper, Provost William, ii, 83-5 

Perot, Morris, i, 383 

Pershing, General John J., ii, 299, 
424 

Philadelphia, Wanamaker’s fondness 
for, i, 378 

Philadelphia Bulletin, i, 368 

Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, 
yoni 

Philadelphia Club, ii, 41 

Philadelphia Commercial Museum, 
il, 71-2 

Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, ii, 
394 

Philadelphia gas leases, i, 380-3 

Philadelphia municipal politics, 1, 
376-983 ii, 300 

Philadelphia Public Schools, ii, 
300-04 

Philadelphia pure water, i, 380 

Philadelphia Rapid Transit, i, 
385-95 


New 


INDEX 


Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, 
i, 149 

Philadelphia Record, i, 307, 
3955 i, 16-17 ; 

Philadelphia Sabbath Association, ii, 
324 

Philadelphia Store News, i, 148, 201, 
Bees 1 LO. 270 

Pittsburgh, Pa., i, 16 

Pittsburgh store, i, 128 

Piatt, Senator, i, + 258,4268-9,4 277; 
329 

Pneumatic tubes in post offices, i, 
308-9 

“Pollyanna,” i, 2103 ll, 460-1 

Polytechnic, London, 1, 293 

Pope Leo, ii, 67, 449 

Porter, Gene Stratton, i, 210 

Portland, Oregon, i, 334 

Postal Museum, Washington, i, 
319-20 

Postal Savings System, i, 284-73 il, 
2215+3756 

Postal Telegraph Co., i, 290 

Post Office Department, i, 271, 281, 
287-9, 296-7, 302-9, 318 

Postmaster-General, Wanamaker as, 
i, 262-337 

Post offices at sea, i, 284, 309-10, 
344 

Pound, Ezra, i, 200 

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, ii, 293 

PrayerJvleetings, .3, (1°7,«30,) 1345425 
146 

Presbyterian Church, i, 31, 193, 232, 
247, 260, 335, 3383 Ul, 310, 322, 
326, 345-50 

Presbyterian Council, ii, 161 

Presbyterian Foreign Missions, il, 54, 
63-4, 70, 348 

Presbyterian Hospital, ii, 349 

Presbyterian Orphanage, ii, 349-50 

Presbytery of Philadelphia, ii, 346-7, 
464-5 

Presidential campaigns (1860), i, 
2543; (1884), i, 299; (1888), i, 
253-61, 3483 (1892), i, 336-73 ii, 


382, 


493 


236; (1896), 1, 347-503 ii, 3, 
7, $2) 2523 (1900), i, 364-68; 
(1908), ii, 237; (1912), i, 269, 
350; il, 236-58, 357-8, 3693 
(1916), i, 735 ii, 389-401 

Princeton Theological Seminary, ii, 9 

Princeton University, i, 122; ii, 298, 
348 

Printemps, Paris, ii, 199 

Prohibition movement, i, 254; party, 
il, 310-113 amendment, ii, 311-13. 
See also Total abstinence 

Public Ledger, i; 28, 34, 67, 136; 
170, 216, 249, 256; il, 193 

Pulitzer, Joseph, i, 271-23; li, 164-5 


Quay, M.)S:)" i) 2.935125 7-63 3’ 336; 
338-69, 3793 11, 241 


Radio broadcasting, ii, 464 

Raikes Centenary, i, 248 

Red Cross, ii, 372, 410, 417 

Redfield, W. C., ii, 253 

Reid, Whitelaw, ii, 166, 172, 177, 
258 

Republican Party, Wanamaker’s at- 
tachment to, i, 252-4. See also 
Presidential Campaigns 

Revival of 1857, i, 34-5, 40, 141 

Revolutionary War, i, 3, 359, 3743 
ll, 141, 411 

Rhineland, i, 2 

Rhodes, Cecil, ii, 68 

Richmond, Va., i, 65, 128 

Rochdale Codperative Society, i, 
126-7, 183 

Rockefeller, John D., i, 3; il, 137 

Rockefeller, Johann Peter, i, 3 

Rome, ii, 54, 67, 85-6, 152, 321 

Roosevelt, Theodore, i, 73, 269, 281, 
299-300, 327-8, 348, 361, 366-8, 
374, 3783 li, 149, 157-8, 239-40, 
243-4, 248-50, 254-6, 257, 348, 
371, 387, 391, 397-9, 408 

Root, Elihu, i, 328; ii, 246 

Rosenwald, Julius, ii, 398 

Rostand, Edmond, i, 199 


494 


Rough Riders, i, 374 

Rural Free Delivery, i, 278-82 

Sabbath observance, i, 33-4, 185) 
3263 ii, 24, 311) 320-27 

Sailors’ Snug Harbor, ii, 4, 9, 104-5, 
i12 

St. Louis, Mo., i, 61; Exposition, ii, 
82-3, 188 

St. Paul, Minn., i, 36 

Salvation Army, ii, 180, 314, 421 

San Francisco earthquake, ii, 114 

Sanitary Commission (Civil War), 
i, 79-80 

Sanitary Fair (1864), i, 79-80, 153 

Sankey, Ira D., i, 133-40. See also 
Moody and Sankey 

Saratoga Springs, 1, 79, 117) 2543 
li, 451 

Savings, importance of, i, 29; il, 
218-27 

Savoy Theatre, London, i, 219 

Scott, Thomas A., i, 131 

Scribner’s Magazine, ii, 17 

Schuylkill Rangers, i, 12-133 ii, 305 

Schuylkill River, i, 5, 8-9, 12-13, 52, 
134, 155, 331, 380 

Selden automobile litigation, ii, 92-8 

Selfridge, Gordon, ii, 48 

Sesqui-Centennial Exhibition, i, 154; 
li, 327 

Shakespeare, William, i, 102 

Shearer, Isaac D., i, 114, 169, 2343 
li, 265-6 

Shedd, John G., ii, 239, 398 

Shelley, ii, 74 

Shepard, Elliott, F., i, 268 

Sherman, Vice-President, ii, 248, 250, 
257 

Sixtieth Anniversary celebration, i, 76 

Silver Anniversary (1901), i, 145 

Smith College, ii, 287 

Society for Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, ii, 91 

Sousa, John Philip, ii, 286 


INDEX 


Spanish-American War, i, 318, 3555 
359-60, 370-63 ii, 285, 377, 402, 
4.04 

Spreckels, Claus A., ii, 254 

Spurgeon, Charles H., i, 121; 1i, 68, 
154, 161 

Standard Oil Co., ii, 114 

Stanley, Henry M., i, 153; ii, 154 

Stetson, John B., ii, 227 

Stewart, A. T., 1, 91-2, 97, 112-13, 
£81, 10675507-75-2373 0; 241 ao 

Stewart, AicD., & Cos, 69,e11 geet. 
125, 167, 175, 2373 ll, 2-6, 91 

Stewart, A. T., Realty Co., ii, 116 

Stoddard, Henry L., i, 324 

Stotesbury, E. T., ii, 241-2, 246 

Strauss, Richard, ii, 110 

Strathcona, Lord, ii, 174-6 

Stuart, Edwin S., i, 383; ii, 257 

Stuart, George H., i, 39-42, 47-8, 
63, 65, 76, 134-5, 1923 li, 376 

Suez Canal, ii, 60 

Sunday, Billy, i, 141, 1963 1, 348 

Sunday School Times, i, 158, 191-3, 
195, 201 

Swan, Sir Joseph, i, 219 

Sweney, John R., i, 196 

Switzerland, i, 123, 248; ii, 58, 351, 
365 

Symmes, Judge, i, 4 


Tadema, Alma, ii, 75 
Taft, WilliamH.,, 3; 145," 78, 226) 
294, 337, 3483 li, 185, 190, 216, 


236-258, 371, 378-9, 387, 389) 
452 

Taine’s “History of English Litera- 
ture,’ 1, 262 


Tanner, H. O., ii, 80 

Tariff issue, i, 254-6, 337) 3503 il, 
QI, 252-6 

Taylor, Zachary, i, 17 

Telegraph and telephone, Govern- 
ment ownership of, i, 287-94, 313 

Tennyson, Alfred, i, 209 

Tietz, Berlin, ii, 199 

Tiffany & Co., i, 167 


INDEX 


Tilden, William I., ii, 252, 302 

Tilden, William T., II., 1, 277 

Times Printing House, i, 
201-23 ll, 308 

Toledo, Ohio, i, 16 

Tolstoi, Leo, i, 246 

Total abstinence work, i, 33-4, 42) 
3263 ii, 305-13, 320-21, 325 

Tower Hall, i, 26-9, 34-5, 63-4) 71, 
105, 165, 181, 206; li, 305 

Tracts, 1, 195-7 

Trenton, i, 2-4 

Trinity College, Dublin, ii, 9 

Troyon, ii, 74 

Trumbull, Henry G., ii, 51 

Tumble Falls, New Jersey, i, 2 

Twain, Mark, ii, 440 


192-3) 


Union Labor, ii, 208-10 

Union League, Philadelphia, 1, 252; 
MAES Pe Mi he Kae 

Union Traction Co., i, 389-98 

United Gas Improvement Co., i, 382 

United States Steel Corporation, 11, 
127-8 

Universal Postal Union, i, 284, 313, 
319 

University of Pennsylvania, i, 1573 
il, 83-5, 298 

University Museum, Philadelphia, ii, 
355 


van Dyke, Henry, ii, 348 

Verne, Jules, i, 215 

Versailles, Treaty of, ii, 424 

Victoria, Queen, i, 122; ii, 49-50, 
351 

Viviani, René, ii, 410 


Wagner, Pastor Charles, i, 2093 ii, 
149 

Walton, R. S., i, 33, 145-63 li, 294 

Wanamaker advertising, i, 82, 86-7, 
96-109, 169, 171-2, 203-6, 2315 
li, 14-27, 93-7 

Wanamaker, Anna Hann, i, 4-5 


495 


Wanamaker Business Club, ii, 212, 
214, 284 

Wanamaker business policies, i, 81, 
94, 145, 239; Ui, 
28-48 

Wanamaker Commercial Institute (J. 
WeiCre LL). diy) 2805,1276,4284-8, 
361, 402 

Wanamaker editorials, ii, 356-67, 
407-8, 419, 423-4, 426-7, 461 

Wanamaker, Elizabeth Kockersper- 
WEE, 1; 5-6, L9-22,/27) Jr tgalZ2> 
242 

Wanamaker, Elizabeth (Mrs. Fales), 
1, 9, 1223 ll, 33 

Wanamaker, F. Marion, i, 234 

Wanamaker, Fernanda (Mrs. Ector 
Munn), ii, 52 

Wanamaker, Fernanda Henry (Mrs. 
Rodman Wanamaker), i, 2473 ii, 
52 

Wanamaker firsts, ii, 29-30 

Wanamaker, Hattie, i, 118-19, 244 

Wanamaker, Henry, i, 2-4, 15 

Wanamaker, Horace, i, 118 

Wanamaker Institute of Industries, 
li, 293-4 

Wanamaker, John, Jr., ii, 52 

Wanamaker, John, Sr., i, 4-5, 9-11, 
1§-21, 30 

Wanamaker, John, & Co., i, 110-116, 
158, 162, 165, 1693 ll, 72 

Wanamaker, Lillie (Mrs. McLeod), 
iy 323, 325, 3443 li, 51 

Wanamaker, London Office, ii, 8, 47, 
172, 417, 446-8 

Wanamaker, Mary (Mrs. Fry), i, 9, 
53 

Wanamaker, Mary (Mrs. Warbur- 
ton), i, 247, 323, 325) 3443 ii, 
170, 378 

Wanamaker, Mary Welsh, i, 247 

Wanamaker, Mrs. John, i, 53, 55-8, 
60-61, 71-2, 75-6, 243-4, 323) 
325-6, 335-6, 3443 ll, 67-8, 125, 
137, 139-144, 184-5, 247, 251, 
349-50) 354-5, 362 


160-80, 212, 


496 


Wanamaker name, i, 1-2, 4, 42, 47) 
264 

Wanamaker, Nelson, i, 4-6, 9-10, 18- 
ZZ DEP NBO VON 

Wanamaker Paris Office, i, 226-83 il, 
47, 186, 369, 417, 446-8 

Wanamaker, Rodman, i, 234-5, 247, 
3225 ll, 51, 68, 79-80, 97, 116, 
126, 161, 168-9, 181-2, 184, 186, 
199, 213, 237) 240, 246-7, 277, 
299, 301, 358, 385, 414, 442) 447, 
471 

Wanamaker, Samuel M., i, 9, 234 

Wanamaker Store (New York), i, 
3545 U, 90, 91-112, 259-281 

Wanamaker Store (Philadelphia), i, 
7, 161-80, 213-39; new building 
of, 1, 2203 li, 42; ‘186-9, ‘192-235, 
259-81, 447 

Wanamaker Store athletics, ii, 276-7 

Wanamaker Store Medical Depart- 
ment, li, 278-9 

Wanamaker Store Mercantile Educa- 
tion, li, 283-9 

Wanamaker Store Family, ii, 259-81 

Wanamaker Store holidays, ii, 272-4 

Wanamaker Stores, telephones in, ii, 
88; horse and motor drawn vehi- 
cles, ii, 89-90; incorporation of, ii, 
112, 116; strike blow at high cost 
of living, ii, 428-38; celebrate 
Founder’s sixtieth anniversary, ii, 
446-7 

Wanamaker Stores in war service, ii, 
371-4) 407-13, 417-19 

Wanamaker, Thomas B., i, 65, 75, 
198, 234-5, 238, 247, 322, 3533 il, 
3, 8, 48, 67-8, 79, 114, 116, 119, 
133-5, 139, 169, 181-2, 194, 202, 
203, 213) 277) 323-4, 336 

Wanamaker, William H., i, 9, 19, 61, 
234 

Wanamaker & Brown, i, 63-72, 81- 
109, I10, 127-9, 143-4, 149, 165, 
196, 234, 272, 372 

Warburton, Mrs. Barclay H., see 
Wanamaker, Mary 


INDEX 


Warburton, Mary Brown, ii, 170 

War Welfare Council, ii, 420 

Warwick, Charles F., i, 389-91 

Washington Arms Limitation Con- 
ference, ii, 425-6 

Washington, George, i, 73; il, 149) 
370-1, 400, 422, 425 

Washington Store, i, 128 

Watterson, Henry, 11, 458 

Watson, Rev. John (Ian Maclaren), 
il, 161 

Watteau, il, 74 

Weaver, John, i, 382-3 

Webster, Daniel, ii, 91 

Weeks, Secretary, ii, 299 

Wellesley College, ii, 298 

Wellesley School, Philadelphia, ii, 
298 

Welsh, John, i, 157, 160 

West, Benjamin, ii, 139 

West Indies, trip to, 11, 457-8 

Westminster Abbey, ii, 50, 154, 161 

Westminster Confession, i, 31 

Western Theological Seminary, Pitts- 
burgh, i, 173 

Western Union Telegraph Co., 3}, 
277) 290-91 

Whilldin, Alexander, i, 134 

White, Henry, ii, 158 

White Ribbon Army, ii, 310 

White Star Line, ii, 171, 178 

Whiteley, William, i, 124-5, 
1O2) 214A, 237 

Whitney, William C., i, 3253 il, 117 

Whittier, John G., ii, 315 

Widener, P. A. B., 11, 117 

Wilhelm, II., Kaiser, ii, 56-8, 168, 
379 

Williams, Sir George, 1, 39, 
125-6, 131, 1823 ll, 49-50, 314, 
351 

Williamson, Isaiah, i, 3; Ul, 218-9, 
294-6 

Williamson Free 
294-6, 358 


131, 


T21, 


School, ii, 


262, 


INDEX 


497 


Wilson, Woodrow, i, 20, 122, 348, World War, i, 73, 77, 200, 318; ii, 


366, 369; i, 286, 370-1, 
387-9, 392-5) 402-8, 423-4, 430 
Windsor Castle, i, 1223 il, 50, 351 


258, 


Women’s Christian Temperance 
Union, ii, 310 | 

Woman Suffrage, i, 159 

WOO, Philadelphia Store Broadcast- 
ing Station, ll, 464 

Wood, General Leonard, ii, 286 

World’s Sunday School Association, 
li, 354-5 

World’s Sunday School Convention, 
il, 4.26 


45, 273, 287, 348, 356, 368-427, 
453, 463 

Yale University, ii, 203, 371 

Young Men’s Christian Association, 
i, 32, 35) 39-48, 57-61, 78-9, 121, 
181, 184, 232, 248, 3385 ll, 49-50, 
63, 65-6, 163, 179, 222, 306, 314, 
351-2) 411, 471 

Y.M.C.A. war work, ii, 411 

Young Women’s Christian Associa- 
tion, i, 46 


Zell’s Encyclopedia, i, 23 
Ziem, li, 75 
Zola, Emile, i, 92, 1243 il, 111 






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